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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23295967">Trials of the Heart</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boschling/pseuds/Boschling'>Boschling</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Lawyers, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:48:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>26,778</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23295967</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boschling/pseuds/Boschling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Beric Dondarrion is a young idealistic knight prosecutor from the Stormlands, recently promoted to King's Landing. Excited to work with his legal heroes and take on the famously violent organized crime families, he learns that justice isn't as straightforward as he believed, heroes don't always look like he expected, and love shows up in surprising places.</p>
<p>So a Beric/Thoros Lawyer AU also featuring found families, sarcastic Jaime Lannisters and a happy ending with some drama/angst along the way.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beric Dondarrion/Thoros of Myr</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hi friends! So you know how I'm working on a real sequel to Light the Way? This... isn't that. Sometimes with particularly ferocious brain worms, you need to write them down before they'll even let you work on what you want to work on. (Plus the Beric/Thoros category is only eight stories away from getting a fourth page! They deserve a fourth page!) It's finished, and I'll post a chapter every other day-ish until I get them out. Happy quarantine, and stay safe!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Beric’s mother died after a long illness. Four years of radiation treatment and chemo, and losing her hair only for it to grow back and then losing it again. At the funeral, he felt only a vague sense of relief. She had been so sick toward the end, and now she was somewhere happier.</p>
<p>Later, sitting alone in his family house, the crashing waves of grief had hit him, and he had curled in his boyhood bedroom and sobbed. After his father’s sudden death during Beric’s high school years, it had just been him and his mother. She had nursed him through the dark depression of his teenage years, his bitterness at his father’s death. She would drive him to college and help him move in to his dorm room. She came to his soccer games and called him every day. During his last year of law school, she had gotten the diagnosis. It hadn’t ever been an option in Beric’s mind. He turned down the prestigious clerkship he’d gotten with a judge in King’s Landing, and then taken a job at the local knight prosecutor’s office in Blackhaven. </p>
<p>He moved back in to his childhood home, and his mother had laughingly insisted on marking his height with a pencil at their old post. She’d had to stand on a stool, he had grown a head taller than her. Tall and just a touch gangly, his narrow shoulders a little stooped. But his mother had smiled at him with a face full of sunshine, with his own dark blonde hair and bright blue eyes reflected back at him, and he knew that in her mind he was just perfect.</p>
<p>The next four years had been hard. What would you trade for time? Your hair? Your spleen? Your bladder? His mother had cried just once at the little bag that had to follow her everywhere. Then she had wiped her tears and ordered a cute leather satchel it could go into. Beric could drive her to the doctor, could make her dinner when she was so tired that she fell asleep at the table. He could sit with her, treasure every moment with her, let her know all the things that he’d never had a chance to tell his father. That she had been the greatest mother a boy could ever ask for. That he loved her endlessly. That he didn’t know how to do the business of life without her.</p>
<p>“Don’t be ridiculous,” she’d smoothed his hair. “You’re going to go be a knight prosecutor in King’s Landing. You’ll meet a very nice boy and live happily every after.”</p>
<p>“I don’t even know if they’d want me,” Beric admitted sheepishly.</p>
<p>“How could they not want you? After you brought down that gang of sex traffickers? That made national news! You’re undefeated in court! Everyone says you’re the next Jaime Lannister!”</p>
<p>It had been impossible to doubt himself in the face of her confidence. But alone in a twin bed too short for him, an orphan at twenty-nine, he felt nothing but doubt.</p>
<p>All the same, it was the only plan he had. His colleagues at the Blackhaven office encouraged him to request a transfer, wrote glowing reviews. They had a party when word came back that the transfer had been approved.</p>
<p>“You’re moving on to the big leagues!” Anguy had grinned. “Real criminals, not yet another counterfeit goods case.”</p>
<p>“Smuggling is a serious issue Blackhaven faces,” Beric began, only for Anguy to roll his eyes and shove a slice of cake in his mouth to shut him up.</p>
<p>He’d closed down the house, and left his hometown with no small amount of trepidation. Blackhaven was the second largest city in the Stormlands, but that wasn’t saying much. The Stormlands were sparsely populated. King’s Landing, population twelve million, had more people than all of Stormlands combined. And now he was here, a knight prosecutor for the state in a city with the highest crime rate in Westeros.</p>
<p>He got a one bedroom apartment in the chic government neighborhood where he worked. It was floor to ceiling windows, fully modern kitchen appliances, all glass and sleek minimalist lines. Sterile, Beric’s traitorous mind whispered, as he tossed and turned in bed trying to get used to the traffic noise.</p>
<p>The week he’d given himself to settle in before he started work was... lonely. He tried to get a feel for the city, so much bigger than Blackhaven, tried to figure out the subway system and the buses and the food. Eventually he started going to bars, just to be around people. Even that wasn’t much of an improvement—he felt like a ghost almost, cheerfully ignored by students laughing and doing shots and financiers elbowing each other over fancy glasses of scotch. It will be better once work starts, Beric told himself. He was using his massively large kitchen to cook, the night before his first day at the King’s Landing prosecutor’s office. He was used to cooking for himself and his mother—now half the food had be dumped in the freezer or the garbage. Things will seem better tomorrow. You’ll meet people, have friends. The Blackhaven office had had a warm camaraderie—underpaid but hard-working lawyers who believed in the justice system and protecting the innocent. In King’s Landing, which had triple the resources and all the high profile cases, how could it be any different except more so?</p>
<p>The next morning, Beric arrived at work early. Work was an imposing building, pillared white marble, with a statue of justice blindfolded, a sword in one hand and scales in another. There were security guards at the front who made him wait skeptically while they checked his credentials. When he was finally issued a badge of his own, he took an elevator to the Knight Prosectors’ floor, and stepped out.</p>
<p>It was well before nine, but all the same, he was surprised to see the offices mostly empty. At Blackhaven, there were always lawyers to be found, bleary eyed and sipping the wretched mud that passed for coffee in the break room.</p>
<p>“Hello?” Beric called.</p>
<p>“Oh hello,” an older gray haired gentleman emerged from a back office. “You’re early.”</p>
<p>Beric tried not to betray any excitement, but his eyes might have bugged out slightly. It was Barristan Selmy! Barristan the Bold! The man who tried Maelys Blackfire for war crimes and won! He was a living legend!</p>
<p>“I’m Barristan Selmy,” Barristan Selmy said, unnecessarily. Although perhaps it was to break the awkward silence. Beric was having trouble getting air into his lungs.</p>
<p>“Charmed,” Beric managed to squeak. Ugh, charmed?! Who even said that? Idiot.</p>
<p>“And you’re the new transfer from Blackhaven. My replacement. Dondarrion?”</p>
<p>Replace-what-now? Beric thought, even as his head bobbed in anxious agreement.</p>
<p>“You’re leaving?” He managed to say in a mostly normal tone of voice.</p>
<p>“Mandatory retirement. Orders from on high,” Barristan said in a flat voice. “Off to greener pastures and all that. It’s no secret a certain shady billionaire wants his son to be head of the department. I was in the way.”</p>
<p>Beric blinked owlishly.</p>
<p>“You don’t mean...”</p>
<p>“Ser Jaime Lannister will be taking over as head of the group, yes.” </p>
<p>Beric blushed at even the name. It seemed sad that two great legal heroes of his didn’t get along. Probably there was some natural clashes when two forceful personalities were in the same room...</p>
<p>Barristan saw Beric’s expression and groaned.</p>
<p>“Don’t tell me you’re one of those cotton headed fools that admires him?”</p>
<p>“He was the youngest knight prosecutor in history!” Beric protested.</p>
<p>“Bought with his father’s money,” Barristan said dismissively.</p>
<p>“He took down Aerys Targaryen! The head of the criminal underworld!” </p>
<p>Barristan Selmy sighed.</p>
<p>“He did, didn’t he? And wasn’t that convenient. The narcotics charges, the warehouses of wildfire, all directly traceable back to Aerys. Aerys gets sent away for life, Lannister gets a career making win, Lannister’s brother-in-law takes over organized crime in King’s Landing, and Tywin Lannister loses an enemy, gains an ally, and proves to the world that justice is distributed when and how he wants it done.”</p>
<p>Beric blinked. That couldn’t be true, what Barristan Selmy was saying. Planted evidence? A knight prosecutor of Jaime Lannister’s caliber would have seen it immediately, would have informed the judge.</p>
<p>“Jaime Lannister has never lost a case, Ser,” Beric replied somewhat stiffly. “Where you see conspiracy, could it not be inherent skill?”</p>
<p>“Aye, he’s talented, I’ll give you that,” Barristan sighed. Then seeing the stricken expression on Beric’s face, he patted him on the shoulder.</p>
<p>“Don’t mind me, just sour grapes from an old man. Truth is, I’m retiring and I’m not ready. I don’t know how I can leave this place.”</p>
<p>“It is the best job in the world, isn’t it?” Beric brightened. “You would know! You worked with Duncan Targaryen! Arthur Dayne! You’ll have to tell me all about them!”</p>
<p>Barristan looked at him with a sort of affectionate pity.</p>
<p>“Gods, you still have that spark. Don’t lose that, that joy in this business. The office isn’t what it was, I think you’ll find. Too many... political... appointments. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do your job, and do it well. Fight for justice, Ser Dondarrion,” Barristan patted him on the back. Beric tried to stand straight, thinking this might be the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.</p>
<p>“At least I’ll have you to show me the way, before you retire,” Beric said determinedly.</p>
<p>“So for the one day then,” a new voice drawled, interrupting the moment. </p>
<p>Beric turned in surprise. He hasn’t even heard anyone come in.</p>
<p>Leaning on a file cabinet by the window with a sort of feline grace was Jaime Lannister.</p>
<p>Beric caught his breath. He’d seen him in a thousand newspaper articles, but the pictures didn’t do him justice. Square jawed, golden haired, his tie loosened casually. Beric took it all in and then took in the green eyes taking him in, narrowed appraisingly.</p>
<p>“Your boss at Blackhaven said you never lost. Said you were going to be the next Jaime Lannister,” his voice was warm and confident, and it took Beric a second to realize he was being mocked.</p>
<p>He felt his ears redden.</p>
<p>“I’m sure he was exaggerating, he likes to exaggerate,” Beric mumbled.</p>
<p>“I think you’ll find I’m one of a kind,” Jaime Lannister said lightly, but there was no mistaking the malice behind the words.</p>
<p>“I see Barristan has been lecturing you on his... theories about the Targaryens. Age can make one rather tiresome in that way,” Jaime smiled.</p>
<p>“If you’ll excuse me, I must return to clearing my office,” Barristan Selmy harrumphed and turned to go.</p>
<p>“Or my office. Depending on how you look at things. How do you look at things Dondarrion?”</p>
<p>Beric was at a loss for words.</p>
<p>“I’m just terribly honored to be here,” he finally managed. “Thank you for choosing me.”</p>
<p>“Oh I didn’t choose you, Barristan did,” Jaime pushed off the file cabinet. “Can’t abide idealists myself. But now that you’re here, I know exactly where to put you.”</p>
<p>Beric tried not to back up as Jaime walked toward him.</p>
<p>“Misdemeanors,” Jaime smirked as Beric flinched.</p>
<p>...misdemeanors?! In Blackhaven, the knights prosecutor didn’t even bother with them, they farmed them out to the smaller Stormlands justice system.</p>
<p>“I don’t know if you saw my file,” Beric gave a last ditch effort to avert this. “I’ve done murders, I put away a sex trafficking ring, I first chaired most...”</p>
<p>“Misdemeanors,” Jaime cut him off coldly. “After all, we’d hate for you to break your streak.”</p>
<p>The day did not improve from there. His office was the smallest, and appeared to be a converted closet. There were no windows.</p>
<p>His other colleagues gradually trickled in. Illyn Payne didn’t say a word to him or anyone else. Boros Blount and Meryn Trant were loud and made uncouth jokes that put Beric on edge. Not to mention they fell over themselves to be in Jaime Lannister’s good graces.</p>
<p>Arys Oakheart, Balon Swann, Osmund Kettleblack, Preston Greenfield... Beric struggled to commit the names to memory. None took any particular interest in him, although it soon became clear that his assignment to misdemeanors was unprecedented.</p>
<p>“Do we even do those?” Osmund scratched the back of his head, only for Blount to elbow him and walk away laughing.</p>
<p>The day further deteriorated when he walked in on an interview between Meryn Trant and a witness. He hadn’t thought twice about it—only briefly glanced in the window paneled door of the conference room and seen the young girl’s frightened face. He had been halfway in before he’d even registered that Meryn was in the room, standing too close to her than was strictly appropriate in the a professional setting.</p>
<p>“Did you need something country mouse?” Trant sneered. The girl’s white face turned to him in mute appeal.</p>
<p>“Your witness looks like she’s under the weather,” Beric tried to sound firm. “I thought I’d take her out for some air before you continue the interview.”</p>
<p>There was a pause as Trant glared at him, dull brown eyes staring at him from under stringy brown hair.</p>
<p>“Don’t bother bringing her back,” he huffed finally. “Think about what I said about your story girly. Let me know if we can come to some kind of... arrangement.”</p>
<p>The girl wouldn’t really speak to Beric as he escorted her out, and hurried from the building with her head down. </p>
<p>When he got back to their floor, he nearly ran into Trant coming out of his closet of an office. Trant purposely hit him with his shoulder, offering no explanation for why he had been going through Beric’s things.</p>
<p>“Stay out of my business,” Trant sneered as Beric ricocheted off of him and hit the wall. </p>
<p>When Beric retreated to the safety of his office, he discovered that someone had poured coffee on the case files he had been working on all morning. Well “someone”. Beric swallowed to fight down the lump rising in his throat. This was quite different from Blackhaven.</p>
<p>The day dragged, and just when it looked like his escape was within sight, Jaime Lannister announced with a sardonic smile that they were going to the Dragonpit to celebrate their dear colleague’s departure. </p>
<p>“On my family’s tab, of course,” Jaime said silkily, which was met with a hearty cheer.</p>
<p>“Drinking not to your taste, lad?” Barristan asked with a wry smile, seeing Beric’s crestfallen expression.</p>
<p>“It is not the drinking, merely the company that my taste needs, er, adjusting to,” Beric admitted. “It’s been a long first day.”</p>
<p>“Well look on the bright side—you can’t be a trial lawyer in King’s Landing and not know the Dragonpit. It’s across from the federal courthouse, and absolutely everyone who’s barred drinks there.”</p>
<p>“Even you?” Beric asked somewhat skeptically as they arrived at the low building. The stonework was crumbling and it was dark inside.</p>
<p>“Even me. Even Aemon the Dragonknight,” Barristan ruffled his hair and disappeared inside.</p>
<p>The bar was in fact quite dark, and comprised of a warren of small to medium rooms that seemed to extend endlessly. The building seemed much larger on the inside than it had on the outside. And sure enough, based on the snatches of conversation he was hearing, the clientele were exclusively lawyers.</p>
<p>“If my paralegal screws up one more filing...”</p>
<p>“I got Aemon Targaryen as the judge for my next case, blind old bat has it out for me...”</p>
<p>“That bitch Lysa Arryn deposed my witness for six hours yesterday...”</p>
<p>“Martell’s filing a paternity suit, but you know how international law is...”</p>
<p>“Country mouse,” Kettleblack hauled him by one arm into a corner where the rest of their table was holding court. Again it was clear from the subtle reorientation of the room around them that they were the center of gravity and Jaime Lannister the epicenter. Beric tried to fade into the shadows, looking down in his lap as the rest of the table ignored him. He felt unworthy of the jealous stares from their fellow patrons, and unworthier still given he was discovering what a fish out of water he was with his colleagues.</p>
<p>Beric had put in about an hour of quietly nursing his drink and was starting to wonder if now would be a socially acceptable time to leave, when Barristan clapped him on the shoulder.</p>
<p>“So what’s the first case on your docket?”</p>
<p>“Are misdemeanors even cases?” Swann snorted into his mug. Barristan quieted him with a glare, although Beric privately agreed.</p>
<p>“It’s petty theft by a minor next week. A Lommy Greenhands?”</p>
<p>“What the fuck’s a Lommy?” Swann sneered.</p>
<p>“Who’s the named defense attorney?” Barristan cut him off.</p>
<p>“Ummm,” Beric wracked his brain back to the papers he’d spend two hours air drying on the radiator. “Thoros Myr?”</p>
<p>“Bloody madman,” Barristan rolled his eyes.</p>
<p>“Oh tough draw,” Oakheart (who Beric had rated as marginally less repellant than the rest of his new workmates excepting Barristan Selmy) jumped in.</p>
<p>“What’s he even doing on shit like that?” Swann frowned. “Not one of the Baratheon gang picked up was it?”</p>
<p>“He can’t have gotten religion,” Oakheart joked, and all three laughed.</p>
<p>“Even drunken assholes have pro bono requirements,” Jaime Lannister jumped in smoothly. “Have fun next week Beric. Such an important case, it’d be a black eye for the department if we lost.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Beric knew that Jaime Lannister was trying to psyche him out, but that didn’t stop him from giving the case extra attention. No matter how he looked at it though, it read as a straightforward slam dunk. </p>
<p>The victim was an adorable old lady who ran a bakery. A young blond boy with a bad limp had been looking at the pastries, when she turned to take some loaves out of the oven. When she turned back, the boy was gone and so was the tip jar, money inside.</p>
<p>She had called the police, who had picked up Lommy Greenhands, a young blond boy with a bad limp, two blocks away. The tip jar had been abandoned outside the bakery, but he’d had some cash on him that could have matched the amount taken. But come on! How many young blond boys with bad limps were there in King’s Landing? And if that wasn’t enough, the lady had made a positive identification. Nope, Beric had this one in the bag.</p>
<p>He took extra care with his appearance all the same, the morning of the trial. Shaved, picked up his best suit from the dry cleaners. The one his mother said made his eyes look extra blue. He knotted and reknotted his tie until it hung perfectly. He got to court early, arranging the documents on his table at perfect ninety degrees angles to the judge’s bench.</p>
<p>He had rehearsed his opening remarks and his closing remarks, and his direct examination of the bakery owner and the police officer who had apprehended Greenhands a thousand times in his head, aware that people were slowly trickling in.</p>
<p>“All rise for the honorable Judge Luwin,” the bailiff called, and Beric lifted his gaze as he stood.</p>
<p>Judge Luwin was older but still spry, his brown hair shot with streaks of gray. He had kindly brown eyes, and gave them an amiable wave to be seated.</p>
<p>“Bailiff, please bring in the defendant,” he instructed.</p>
<p>Lommy Greenhands was indeed a slight youth of perhaps fourteen, with lank blond hair and a leg that appeared to be twisted in some fashion. He hobbled awkwardly to the defense table, where the attorney pulled the chair out and helped him get seated.</p>
<p>Beric snuck a longer look at the attorney. Thoros Myr. He was clearly well known around the Knight Prosecutors’ office. He had maybe ten years on Beric, was only an inch or two shorter and significantly stockier. But whatever he was, Beric thought doubtfully, he did not appear to be much of a lawyer. His suit was wrinkled and there was a mustard stain on his tie. Given that it was nine in the morning, Beric assumed it was not recent. His dark red hair was unprofessionally long, and had been pulled back in a disheveled looking top-knot to keep it at bay. </p>
<p>As if feeling his stare, Thoros Myr turned and shot him a wink. Beric gave a little harrumph of outrage and turned back to his desk.</p>
<p>“Ser Beric Dondarrion, is the state ready to proceed?” Judge Luwin called.</p>
<p>“I am, your honor,” Beric replied promptly.</p>
<p>“Thoros Myr, is the defense?”</p>
<p>“Not quite yet, your honor,” Thoros called back, scratching his head a tad sheepishly.</p>
<p>There was a pause while Beric and the judge stared at him. Even his client, little Lommy, stared at him. He gave a rueful grin back. Beric guessed that his nose had been broken at some point, and it pulled all of his features slightly off kilter. </p>
<p>“Are we waiting for something in particular, counselor?” The judge asked acidly.</p>
<p>“Oh, well it’s a surprise,” Thoros beamed.</p>
<p>“Mr. Myr, I will not have any of your antics in my courtroom. Unless you have a compelling reason that this trial should be deferred, we will begin.”</p>
<p>“Just five minutes?”</p>
<p>“NO Mr. Myr. Counselor, your opening remarks,” Judge Luwin turned to Beric firmly. He stood.</p>
<p>“Your honor, I know there is a tendency in our profession to look down on the so called lesser crimes. Petty theft, vandalism, certain forms of drug use. But the fact is that the moment we send society the message that some laws are less important than others—that’s the moment we cede control of our justice system. If we decide that petty theft isn’t worth prosecuting, the hard to stop Mr. Greenhands here from doing it again? What’s to stop him from hurting someone next time? After all, we’ve taught him that some crimes  don’t matter, and why shouldn’t burglary be one of those crimes? Why shouldn’t assault? There is a perception that misdemeanors are victimless crimes, but that is far from the case. Today you will meet Nan Winters, grandmother of ten and small business-owner. She and her family depend on the money in that tip jar to eat at night. And you will hear how a young man with blond hair and a marked limp snatched that tip jar while her back was turned. And the police apprehended Mr. Greenhands, a young man with blond hair and a marked limp not two blocks away—“</p>
<p>From behind Beric, there was the sound of the courtroom door opening and people shuffling in. Quite a few based on the whispers, but he was on a roll.</p>
<p>“Your honor, I ask you, how many young men with blond hair and limps are in this city?” The judge had a strange look on his face, but Beric pressed on. “It beggars belief that a teen of Lommy’s exact description, a description possibly unique to him in all of King’s Landing, was found not two blocks away from the scene of the crime. Statistics alone are enough to convict the defendant, but we have more than statistics. We have Nan Winters’ own identification of him as the perpetrator, not twenty minutes after this crime had been committed. We have a victim, we have a criminal, and we have a crime. I would ask that you find the defendant guilty.”</p>
<p>Beric sat down, but couldn’t resist peeking at his opposing counsel to see if his remarks had any impact. He glanced once quickly to his right. And then he turned fully and stared.</p>
<p>Sitting, standing and lounging behind Thoros Myr and Lommy Greenhands in the public gallery were dozens of blond boys. Blond boys of all shapes and sizes, but what they universally had in common was something wrong with one leg. Boys with crutches, boys in wheelchairs, boys with prosthetic legs.</p>
<p>Thoros Myr stood to make his address. Or rather he stood, walked around his desk, and then slouched against the edge. He scratched his nose contemplatively.</p>
<p>“Ser Dondarrion raises an interesting question. How many young boys with blond hair and a limp are in King’s Landing? I’d wager it more than our good knight prosecutor seems to think. Twelve million people. Perhaps there were fewer back home?” Thoros Myr arched an eyebrow. Beric gritted his teeth. “My case is simple, your honor. The police grabbed the wrong child. An understandable mistake. Nan Winters has poor eyesight. They showed her one blond boy, breaking every rule of police line ups, by the way, and said this is him. What was a frightened old lady who could barely see supposed to think? Little Lommy is innocent your honor. The defense rests.”</p>
<p>“Your honor? May I have a word?” Beric was on his feet before the other counsel had sat down.</p>
<p>“Approach the bench,” Luwin waved him up.</p>
<p>“Your honor, this peanut gallery is absurd,” Beric sputtered. “He’s packed the court with look a likes to prove a point, but it’s extrinsic evidence that’s completely inadmissible! There’s absolutely no proof any of these kids were within miles of the bakery. And the longer they sit there, the more they have an unconscious bias on the outcome! You need to dismiss them immediately.”</p>
<p>“What are we talking about?” Thoros Myr ambled up.</p>
<p>“You don’t have permission to approach the bench,” Beric growled.</p>
<p>“Hey, Luwin, can I approach the bench?” The defense attorney asked from where he was leaning on the bench.</p>
<p>The judge waved a hand.</p>
<p>“Now I would hope that we’re not discussing asking Little Lommy’s physical therapy support group to leave the courthouse? After they came all this way, especially given that mobility is a factor? Luwin, you can’t,” Thoros wheedled.</p>
<p>“I suppose Little Lommy’s friends can stay,” the judge sighed.</p>
<p>Beric wanted to groan. He had used the fucking nickname. It was the oldest public defender trick in the book. Call your juvenile client a child, a boy, give him a cutesy nickname. Anything but a nearly adult idiot capable of making their own life decisions.</p>
<p>Behind him Thoros winked again. Beric scowled. Finding an army of clones, however, was a new one.</p>
<p>The trial did not improve. </p>
<p>True to his word, Thoros got the police officer’s testimony of Nan Winter’s identification thrown out, on the basis that the officer didn’t follow the procedure for witness lineups. </p>
<p>Now all Beric had was Nan’s word that the boy in the courtroom was the boy who stole from her and the fact the the police officer did find him two blocks away. </p>
<p>He put Nan Winters on the stand. She was a good witness, intensely likeable, crow’s feet deeply stamped in her perpetually smiling face.</p>
<p>“It was that boy, I saw him,” she said definitively, and Beric can’t resist shooting another glance at his opposing counsel.</p>
<p>Thoros was sitting with his chin resting in both hands, as if he were intensely interested. Beric’s eyes danced on before Thoros could react to the look, but he could feel his the return gaze on him even after he’d turned back to his witness.</p>
<p>When Beric was done, he sat down a trifle smugly. He had ended on talking about what the tip jar meant for Nan Winters and her family, and she’d been nearly in tears. It had been heart-wrenching.</p>
<p>“It ain’t right your honor,” the woman carefully removing her spectacles and blotting her eyes with a tissue. “It ain’t right what he—“ she pointed at the defendant, “did to us.”</p>
<p>Let’s see ‘Little Lommy’ squirm out of that one.</p>
<p>“I hear you have the best morning buns in the city,” Thoros stood up slowly.</p>
<p>“We do indeed sir,” Nan said, a little haughtily, but she straightened her back.</p>
<p>“What about those pastries they make in Lys, with the twisted sugar bread...”</p>
<p>“Love knots. We make those too.”</p>
<p>“Baking must be a lot of work,” Thoros said conversationally.</p>
<p>“Not for slackers, that’s true,” Nan sniffed. </p>
<p>“It can’t be as easy as it was, with you getting on.”</p>
<p>“You have that right. Every time i take a tray out of the oven, I wonder if this is the day my back gives out,” Nan sighed, prior suspicion gone entirely.</p>
<p>“Why don’t you take us through your typical morning at the bakery?” Thoros prompted.</p>
<p>Beric felt his eyes start to glaze over as Nan went into a long winded explanation of getting up at four to prepare the breads, the pastries she had to make first, the haggling with vendors. If Thoros had a point with this line of questioning, Beric wasn’t sure what is was. He thought about objecting as to relevance but it seemed unnecessarily petty, and at least one of them had to act with some kind of decorum.</p>
<p>“Your spectacles must get all fogged up from the heat,” Thoros was saying sympathetically.</p>
<p>“Oh I don’t wear them while I’m baking, I just keep them by the cash register for transactions. Otherwise they’d slide right off my nose the moment I bent over to pick up some muffins,” Nan replied cheerily. Beric’s ears pricked up.</p>
<p>“So your spectacles were actually by the cash register when the thief came in?” Thoros asked offhand.</p>
<p>“That‘s where I always keep them,” Nan nodded.</p>
<p>“So you never actually saw the thief without your spectacles,” Thoros leaned on the gallery railing with a glance at the judge.</p>
<p>“Not till the police brought ‘im back,” Nan said cheerily, completely oblivious of the holes she was shooting in Beric’s case.</p>
<p>“Would you mind taking off your spectacles now?” Thoros asked.</p>
<p>The lady obliged, squinting slightly at them.</p>
<p>“How far away would you say the thief was standing from you?”</p>
<p>“No more than five paces.”</p>
<p>“Let’s count them. One, two...” Thoros began taking rather dramatic silly steps away from her and she laughed. Beric seethed.</p>
<p>“Objection, relevance, your honor—“</p>
<p>“Overruled,” Luwin said brusquely, scooting forward to get a better look at Thoros’ antics.</p>
<p>“Five,” Thoros finished with a flourish and bowed. Nan Winters clapped. Beric wanted to pound his head on the table.</p>
<p>“Could I trouble some of Little Lommy’s companions to join me up here?” Thoros turned to the gallery. “Lommy?”</p>
<p>He bustled around, arranging people, creating a rather bedraggled looking lineup of blond children.</p>
<p>“Which one robbed you Mrs. Winters?” Thoros called when he was ready.</p>
<p>“That one,” Nan shouted triumphantly, jabbing with her finger. It was the wrong boy.</p>
<p>Somehow Beric managed to stand up and deliver a reasonably strong closing statement, although he remembered very little of it afterwards. Somehow he managed to keep a neutral expression through the judge saying that the state had not met its burden of proof and that Lommy Greenhands would be released.</p>
<p>He’d lost his first case. A fucking misdemeanor. He could imagine his colleagues’ jeers already. Maybe they would send him packing back to Blackhaven. Maybe it would be for the best.</p>
<p>He was so caught up in his own thoughts as he robotically repacked his briefcase that he barely noticed the other counsel come up to him.</p>
<p>“Well argued Ser. You’ll be a credit to the Knights Prosecutor,” Thoros Myr clapped him on the back.</p>
<p>“Um thanks,” Beric mumbled, flustered. “You too.”</p>
<p>Of course he meant you too like ‘you argued well too’. Not like Thoros would also be a credit to the Knights Prosecutor. That didn’t make any sense. He’d known what Beric meant right?</p>
<p>Beric chewed it over at the Dragonpit, where he’d been frogmarched by Blount and Swann, so the entire gang could make fun of him over ale. He hoped he hadn’t been too curt, he didn’t want to come across as a bad loser. He just... Kettleblack’s elbow caught Beric’s glass and dumped it into Beric‘s lap. Beric sighed. He’d just had a really long two weeks.</p>
<p>He managed to shake off Kettleblack’s slurred apologies, although ultimately accepted the dragons to replace the drink that he had no intention of drinking.</p>
<p>Naturally he ran into Jaime Lannister heading toward their table on his way to the bar.</p>
<p>“Don’t tell me you took your first loss THAT hard,” Jaime glanced pointedly at the dark patch now staining his groin area. </p>
<p>Beric felt somewhat absurdly like he might cry. He had just lost his first case, and now his former hero was making fun of him with schoolyard taunts about wetting his pants?</p>
<p>“Kettleblack spilled my beer,” Beric answered tersely instead.</p>
<p>“Hnn. If it’s any consolation, going against Thoros Myr in your first case was bad luck. Like introducing a bug to a meat grinder,” Jaime yawned. Beric gathered that in this analogy he was the bug. Was that an improvement on country mouse? As if Lannister had read his mind, he continued.</p>
<p>“Sorry about not being the next Jaime Lannister, country mouse. It must be quite the blow,” Jaime smirked as he brushed by.</p>
<p>Beric made it to the bar before burying his head in his arms. Don’t cry. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry...</p>
<p>“Buddy, are you going to order or what?” The bartender snapped.</p>
<p>“Here,” Beric stuck out the fist of dragons.</p>
<p>“And you want a...” the bartender prompted him, rolling his eyes.</p>
<p>Beric looked around for inspiration. He didn’t want another drink. He didn’t want to go back to that shitty table and try to grin as a bunch of assholes made fun of him and his joke of a career. He wanted to go back to his moonscape apartment and lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling and wonder what the point was.</p>
<p>Then he saw him. Sitting at a table by himself, squinting at some papers, swirling a glass of something in his hands. Thoros Myr. The guy who had just handed his ass to him.</p>
<p>“Get him another round,” Beric jerked his head to the corner. There was a delay as the bartender looked over, rolled his eyes, poured a glass of what looked like straight rum, collared a waitress, gave her the glass. Only then did he take Beric’s money, slowly counting out the change. </p>
<p>“Can I close out my tab too?”</p>
<p>“Why are you paying in cash if you had a card open?!” The bartender demanded rhetorically. Beric didn’t want to get into the circumstances which had led to Osmund Kettleblack spotting him a drink, but the bartender was fishing through the receipts already. He signed his receipt, adding a more generous tip than he wanted (no reason this man should suffer for his bad mood), then walked back to give Osmund his change.</p>
<p>Thankfully Kettleblack was snickering over something with Greenfield and barely looked up when Beric put the change in front of him. Jaime Lannister’s cat green eyes flicked up from his own conversation to eye Beric, but he made no move to prevent his departure.</p>
<p>Escape thus assured, Beric hurried toward the exit, head down, carefully making eye contact with no one.</p>
<p>That was why it was dismaying, but not altogether unsurprising, when he collided hard with someone who had stepped into his path.</p>
<p>“Oof,” Beric grunted, staggering a step back.</p>
<p>“You’re supposed to come over after you send the drink. Haven’t you ever picked up a girl before?” Thoros Myr grinned.</p>
<p>“I’m gay,” Beric replied back somewhat stupidly. If his less than talkative response was a deterrent however, Thoros did not register it.</p>
<p>“It’s the same concept either way. Since you aren’t playing by the rules, I’ve come to collect.”</p>
<p>“I just meant to congratulate you on the win,” Beric shifted uncomfortably. “I wasn’t trying to um...”</p>
<p>“I’m joking,” Thoros rolled his eyes. Then he grabbed Beric by the arm and forcibly dragged him to his table. “No offense, but you don’t seem like the type to pick up strangers in bars.”</p>
<p>“I’m not,” Beric admitted.</p>
<p>“I meant what I said at the courthouse. You’re very good. Much better than most of those jokers.”</p>
<p>“Thank you Ser...”</p>
<p>“Not a Ser.”</p>
<p>“You’re not a Knight Defender?”</p>
<p>“With their shit wages and caseloads? No thank you. I interceded on Lommy’s behalf out of the goodness of my heart.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” Beric said. That was right, Lannister had said something about pro bono, hadn’t he? “Well for your sake then, I hope justice was done in court today.”</p>
<p>“Justice?!” Thoros snorted incredulously. “He obviously did it. The little shit was caught two blocks from the bakery. I guess that’s what a bum leg gets you.”</p>
<p>“But,” Beric goggled. “You said...”</p>
<p>“I was representing my client to the best of my ability,” Thoros grinned. “I’m not in it for the justice.”</p>
<p>“You’re a lawyer!”</p>
<p>“I happen to think mercy is more important,” Thoros shrugged. “Lommy’s fourteen. Small for his age. Underweight. Grew up in foster homes. Bad leg. Do you have any idea how hard life is for a kid like that?”</p>
<p>Beric swallowed. He did not, but Thoros didn’t seem to expect a response.</p>
<p>“And even for a juvenile, a third strike is a minimum six year penalty, no discretion. So what, he goes away until he’s twenty for a handful of coins? And then he gets out and he’s never graduated from high school, he has none of the necessary skills to move on, he’s trapped in a cycle of crime and poverty.”</p>
<p>“Okay, but you said three strikes,” Beric leaned forward. “The whole point is to incentivize people learning from their mistakes! Recidivism shows they can’t or won’t accept mercy in the first place!”</p>
<p>“So you think six years is fair? What was the total? Fifteen dragons?”</p>
<p>“Seventeen thirty,” Beric corrected. “But it’s not about what’s fair, it’s about what’s right. Our society democratically chose these laws. How can you just sit there and decide they don’t apply to some people?”</p>
<p>“I can, I did,” Thoros grinned. Beric looked at him exasperatedly.</p>
<p>“Waitress!” Thoros flagged the woman down. “Another round for me. Ser Dondarrion, what are you having.”</p>
<p>“It’s Beric. I’ll have whatever you got.”</p>
<p>“Trust me,” Thoros’ voice dropped into mischievously conspiratorial. “You don’t want what I’m having.”</p>
<p>“Maybe I do,” Beric said stubbornly.</p>
<p>“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Thoros laughed. And for the first time since Beric had arrived in King’s Landing, Beric laughed too.</p>
<p>It was actually fire. Beric started coughing helplessly, and Thoros had to reach over to thump his back. Half a glass of water later, Beric could appreciate that there was a strangely sweet aftertaste that lingered.</p>
<p>“What is that... poison?” Beric wheezed.</p>
<p>“Myrrish rum.”</p>
<p>“So you’re from Myr?”</p>
<p>“Did you think with a last name like Myr, I was from Naath?”</p>
<p>“Well it certainly has a lack of originality,” Beric admitted.</p>
<p>“I grew up in a group home run by the local temple. Don’t know what my real last name is,” Thoros mentioned casually. Beric blinked. He remembered the casual finality with which Thoros had spoken about Lommy Greenhands’ prospects and felt retroactively happy he had lost.</p>
<p>“I meant it too, what I said before. You were amazing,” Beric said sheepishly. “That thing with all the blond kids, I’d never seen anything like it.”</p>
<p>“Not even the first time I’ve gotten away with it,” Thoros grinned. “I packed a gallery with fat men with black hair once and said it was a weight watchers men’s group. My client gave me a bloody nose after, but it worked.”</p>
<p>They both laughed, and Beric felt bold enough to attempt another sip of Myrrish rum.</p>
<p>“You were right what you said in the courtroom about me not being from here,” he sighed once his coughing had subsided. “I’m from Blackhaven in the Stormlands. I’m starting to think that moving here was a bad idea.”</p>
<p>“Why do you say that?” Thoros frowned.</p>
<p>“I don’t fit in anybody at work. I don’t think they like me very much,” Beric tried to shrug it off, as if being mocked by people you’d admired your entire life was no big thing.</p>
<p>“They’re a pack of assholes,” Thoros said flatly. “You should be glad you don’t fit in with them.”</p>
<p>“But they’re the Knights Prosecutor of King’s Landing, the best of the best,” Beric protested weakly. Privately, he wasn’t so sure he disagreed.</p>
<p>Thoros gave an incredulous snort.</p>
<p>“Lannister’s the best of the best maybe. The others, hardly. Ever since Tywin Lannister realized how useful it was to have somebody in the prosecutor’s office, he’s been stuffing it with political appointees. Face it kid, the days of the Dragonknight are over.”</p>
<p>“Don’t call me kid,” Beric scowled. “You can’t be more than ten years older than me.”</p>
<p>“Thirty-eight.”</p>
<p>“Nine years. I’m not a kid.”</p>
<p>“As you wish Ser.”</p>
<p>“Don’t call me Ser either! You make being a Knight sound like a bad thing!”</p>
<p>“As far as I’m concerned it is,” Thoros grinned. “Am I allowed to address you at all?”</p>
<p>Beric downed his glass, this time managing to quell the shudder that passed through him.</p>
<p>“Yes,” he said haughtily. “You may call me just Beric.”</p>
<p>“Okay Just Beric.”</p>
<p>“Shut up. Another!” Beric waved at the waitress.</p>
<p>Whether it was the rum (which was growing on him), or the company, he was prepared to admit that this was the best night he’d had in a long time. Certainly since before he’d come to King’s Landing. Possibly since before his mother had died.</p>
<p>Thoros was funny and interesting and seemed to have met all of Beric’s legal heroes. He genuinely listened to what Beric had to say, even if half of the time it was to argue with it. </p>
<p>Beric gave him a bright smile as Thoros finished his own glass, and Thoros gave him a lazy grin back. A flush of warmth crept down Beric’s spine.</p>
<p>“And another thing,” Beric huffed. “I hate the food here. Why does everything taste so bland?”</p>
<p>“You’re not going to the right places, that’s all,” Thoros shook his head. “Let me show you around the city. A few ghost peppers from Asshai and you’ll be begging me for bland.”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Beric said a little giddy at the thought that he might have made a friend. That’s what friends did after all. Went exploring restaurants together.</p>
<p>“You have to give it longer than two weeks. You think you had it bad, at least you don’t have an accent!”</p>
<p>“You don’t have an accent!”</p>
<p>“Not anymore, I’ve lived here since I ran away from home when I was fifteen. Try walking around in a top-knot speaking Valyrian for a couple days and then we’ll talk,” Thoros shook his head. Beric again felt a lump in his throat—it didn’t seem fair that anything bad would ever happen to his kindly new friend—but Thoros didn’t seem to find anything particularly tragic in his circumstances. “Promise you’ll give it six months. If I can make it six months, so can you,” Thoros said, with a serene confidence that Beric would have given anything to possess.</p>
<p>“I promise,” he mumbled.</p>
<p>“And that you’ll never make a relevancy objection again.”</p>
<p>“Hey!”</p>
<p>“Oh come on, you were just trying to break my stride!”</p>
<p>“Well what was I supposed to do, you were destroying my case!”</p>
<p>“I thought it was about arriving at the truth, Beric. Don’t tell me you can’t handle the truth.”</p>
<p>“You just said Lommy was guilty!”</p>
<p>“Ugh I know. Fucking idiot. But he’ll never get another morning bun from Nan Winters. Honestly, I think that might be the worst punishment of all.”</p>
<p>“Fine, I’ll never make a stupid relevancy objection again, IF you never give a defendant a stupid cutesy nickname again.”</p>
<p>Thoros gave a snort of laughter, and then it was Beric’s turn to clap him on the back as he choked on his drink.</p>
<p>“I thought about Limpin’ Lommy. Too much?”</p>
<p>Beric gave a mock groan.</p>
<p>They ended up closing the bar down, which was crazy because Beric never closed bars down. They staggered out into the night, and Beric was amazed to discover it was nearly four in the morning.</p>
<p>He’d had a few drinks, but given they’d been there for at least eight hours, he was fairly sober. </p>
<p>As they walked out, a blonde girl who had been standing in the shadows peeled herself off the wall.</p>
<p>“Eeey, Thoros, you looking?” She pouted her lips, and Beric realized with an uncomfortable start that she was a prostitute.</p>
<p>“Does Chataya know you’re out so late?” Thoros called back with easy familiarity, and she huffed and disappeared again into the shadows.</p>
<p>“Little brat’s not even legal,” Thoros rolled his eyes.</p>
<p>“Ummm,” Beric had turned bright red.</p>
<p>“Don’t worry your principles counselor, I don’t pay for sex,” Thoros snickered, patting his cheek.</p>
<p>Beric let out a sigh of relief.</p>
<p>“Anymore,” Thoros added.</p>
<p>Beric glared.</p>
<p>“Alright, I’m this way,” Thoros jerked his hand in the opposite direction of Beric’s apartment. “You have my number, lemme know if you want to go to that Yi Ti place I was telling you about on Saturday.”</p>
<p>“Sure thing,” Beric tried to sound casual and not like it was literally the only social activity on his calendar. “And um... thanks.”</p>
<p>“For what?” Thoros tilted his head. </p>
<p>“I just... you didn’t have to spend all night talking to me. But I’m glad you did.”</p>
<p>“Maybe I wanted to,” Thoros shrugged.</p>
<p>“Really,” Beric said skeptically.</p>
<p>“Maybe I thought you seemed like you could use a friend,” Thoros admitted. Beric nodded at the answer.</p>
<p>“But also I wanted too,” he smirked.</p>
<p>And Beric couldn’t help but smile back.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The problem with only having one friend, Beric decided, is that you might end up getting a little... overly invested in them.</p>
<p>That was it. He was just a little isolated, that’s all. That was why getting a text from Thoros was sufficient to put him in a good mood all day. That’s why coming into a bar and seeing him there sent a little flush of warmth down his spine. He had a new friend, and friends made you happy. </p>
<p>And not just any friend. Probably the coolest funniest smartest friend he’d ever had. Thoros did know all the best restaurants, and true to his word, took Beric on an exhaustive tour of the dumps and dives of King’s Landing. He seemed to delight in walking Beric up to some squalid unmarked building and then unveiling the culinary masterpieces inside with a twitch of the imaginary curtain. He always knew the owners, or the bartenders, or... somebody. Thoros, Beric was discovering, knew a lot of people.</p>
<p>He was also definitely making Beric a better lawyer. It wasn’t just being constantly called upon to defend their legal system. He would sit at their table at the Dragonpit and let Beric bounce ideas off him, or read his opening or closing statements. It was just so helpful to have a really good defense attorney turn over an idea and try to poke holes in it. Certainly, Beric won his next several cases easily.</p>
<p>He settled into an uneasy truce with his office mates. By unspoken agreement, he got there early and kept the door to his office shut most of the time.</p>
<p>It didn’t matter. Work was a peaceful, if quiet eight hours of solitude. He was very efficient, unless Thoros was in the mood to pepper him with endless texts. Thoros was the type of person who would never send one long text where twenty-five shorter ones would do. And Beric couldn’t help but respond immediately, sometimes diverging their conversation into separate threads, discussing any number of things simultaneously.</p>
<p>So yes, Thoros was a prolific texter. That was one fact that Beric had collected about him. He was always on the lookout for something else to add to his hoard.</p>
<p>The second, was that he was somewhat incongruously, religious.</p>
<p>Beric had been running through the park on a Sunday, and then decided to extend the run into a neighborhood he didn’t know very well. He was starting to regret this decision, suspecting that he was quite lost and the neighborhood itself a little sketchier than he remembered, when he saw a certain familiar red top-knot turning the corner at the end of the street.</p>
<p>“Thoros!” He called, and put on some speed to catch up, so was quite out of breath by the time he rounded the corner himself to discover that Thoros was not alone.</p>
<p>There was a woman standing with him with long red hair that fell in a curtain around pale and rather remote features. It was nine in the morning. Why were they together? Had they spent the night together? Was she his girlfriend?</p>
<p>“Beric!” Thoros grinned. “Why are you here? Why are you awake? It’s a Sunday!”</p>
<p>“Was going for a run and saw you,” Beric panted. “You’re up early.”</p>
<p>“I’m off to temple. Beric, this is my colleague, Melisandre.”</p>
<p>Melisandre dipped her head in greeting, a little haughtily. She looked full of herself, Beric decided.</p>
<p>“I thought you had a solo practice?” He said, perhaps slightly grumpily. Melisandre raised an eyebrow.</p>
<p>“So does Mel. We share offices. The rent in King’s Landing  is obscene. Ungodly. Can’t you do something about it Mel?”</p>
<p>“That wasn’t funny the first time,” Melisandre rolled her eyes.</p>
<p>“Melisandre does First Amendment freedom of religion litigation mostly. Fights the good fight for believers,” Thoros explained to Beric. “We met at temple.”</p>
<p>How very happy for them, Beric thought sourly.</p>
<p>“I didn’t realize you were religious,” Beric blurted.</p>
<p>“Yes, I’m a very diligent follower of R’hllor,” Thoros grinned.</p>
<p>Melisandre coughed.</p>
<p>“Somewhat diligent.”</p>
<p>Melisandre coughed again.</p>
<p>“Am a sincere believer who should probably go to temple more than I do?”</p>
<p>That seemed to satisfy her.</p>
<p>“I am going to continue on. Beric, it was nice to meet you. If you ever wish to join us, the Lord of Light has room in his heart for all,” she swept him an austere curtsy and hurried off.</p>
<p>“She wants to get there early so she can get a seat next to her crush,” Thoros stage whispered.</p>
<p>Beric blinked.</p>
<p>“Oh, you’re not... together?”</p>
<p>In retrospect, he didn’t think Thoros needed to have laughed quite so loudly.</p>
<p>A third thing about Thoros was that Thoros might not have been Jaime Lannister famous, but he was just a little bit... infamous.</p>
<p>Barristan Selmy stopped by maybe a month after his retirement. He was sporting a tan, which surprised Beric, who wouldn’t have thought him the type to retire on a beach somewhere.</p>
<p>“Ser Beric!” Barristan beamed, opening his little closet of an office. “I didn’t expect to find you cooped up in here!”</p>
<p>“It’s nice to see you again,” Beric smiled back. “You look well.”</p>
<p>“I’ve been seeing the world. Well, mostly Mereen. But I don’t mind admitting I miss the job.” Barristan Selmy looked down at Beric’s papers with a wistful fondness.</p>
<p>“Saving the day one jaywalker at a time?” Beric joked. </p>
<p>“It’s good honest work,” Barristan patted his shoulder.</p>
<p>“Ser Barristan,” Jaime Lannister walked over.</p>
<p>“Ser Jaime.” Again there was that strange charge of unease between them.</p>
<p>“Come to see if your little chick has learned to fly yet?” Jaime snarked. Beric really resented being the butt of all these metaphors.</p>
<p>“Come to check in on a young colleague,” Barristan said stiffly. “If you’ll recall, I tried to do the same for you.”</p>
<p>“Weren’t those the days,” Jaime leaned against the doorframe. “That was before the Aerys case of course. You didn’t have much time after that.”</p>
<p>Barristan flushed slightly, whether in embarrassment or anger, Beric wasn’t sure.</p>
<p>“Well no need to worry, Beric’s got a pillar of the legal community looking out for him.”</p>
<p>“You?” Barristan said scornfully.</p>
<p>“I’ve learned it’s best to look out for myself,” Jaime bared his teeth in a grin. “Thoros Myr. Barristan lost a case to Thoros once too. You have that in common.” He pushed himself off the doorframe and walked back to his office.</p>
<p>“You lost a case to Thoros?” Beric said curiously. Thoros had never mentioned Barristan Selmy. If Beric had ever beaten Barristan in court, he would have probably found a way to talk about it at some point.</p>
<p>“A fairly famous one,” Barristan gave a rueful smile. “The murder of Rhaegar Targaryen by Robert Baratheon.”</p>
<p>“Alleged murder,” Thoros said later that night, looking at Beric through the bottom of his glass. It distorted his face in a funny fisheye way and he looked every bit the lazy silly friend that Beric had come to love. In a platonic way. “It was self-defense.”</p>
<p>“Barristan seemed pretty certain it was murder.”</p>
<p>“Ser Barristan’s head is so full of right and wrong that there’s not much room for reality,” Thoros set the glass down. “Twelve jurors disagreed with him.”</p>
<p>His voice had its usual sardonic lilt, but something about the finality with which he spoke made Beric realize that he was angry. Worried that he had upset him and not quite sure why, Beric’s brain scrambled frantically for a different topic.</p>
<p>“The Baratheons.... I knew one of them. Before he died.”</p>
<p>“Which one?”</p>
<p>“Renly,” Beric remembered their high school days and blushed.</p>
<p>“Oh you mean like you... knew.... him,” Thoros’ voice dipped suggestively.</p>
<p>“That too,” Beric gave a sheepish smile.</p>
<p>“That’s funny. We’re...” Thoros said a word in Myrrish Valyrian that Beric didn’t understand.</p>
<p>“What’s that?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know if there’s an equivalent in Common. I guess a literal translation would be something like bed brothers. It’s when you’ve slept with someone whose slept with someone else, or you’ve slept with someone whose slept with someone whose slept with someone...”</p>
<p>“Okay I get it,” Beric laughed, holding up his hands to stop him. “But you and RENLY?”</p>
<p>First Thoros wasn’t gay. Second, Renly had been charming and funny, but fairly superficial. Thoros wasn’t his type. Not that Thoros wasn’t good looking, because he definitely was (Beric’s mind hastily skittered off that topic), but Renly liked conventionally attractive men. Had liked. </p>
<p>His family was notoriously involved in smuggling. Robert Baratheon, in addition to killing Rhaegar Targaryen, had established them as the head of organized crime after Aerys Targaryen had been put away. For some ten years, Renly had lived a life of privilege in the Stormlands while Robert ruthlessly ruled his kingdom. Then, drunk and high on coke, Robert had lost control of his car while driving and splattered his brains on a forest road. There had been a brief and bloody civil war amidst the Baratheons, between his eldest son Joffrey (backed by the Lannisters) and his brother Renly. It had ended abruptly when Renly’s body had washed ashore in the harbor with a bullet through the back of his head.</p>
<p>Beric absently took a sip for someone he hadn’t seen in many years but didn’t deserve the hand he’d been dealt.</p>
<p>“Me and Renly?” Thoros was mock shuddering at Beric’s response. “Gods, no. Remember when he was dating that actor?”</p>
<p>“Loras Tyrell?!” Beric blurted. Because Loras Tyrell was the famously good looking star of two different action franchises, and the idea of Thoros having hooked up with Loras seemed even less likely.</p>
<p>“Right, before he was famous, Loras had a thing with this guy Olyvar. And um Olyvar and I might have hooked up once or twice,” Thoros grinned slyly.</p>
<p>“So you had sex with Olyvar...” Beric began slowly, still trying to process this new bit of information.</p>
<p>“Who had sex with Loras, who had sex with Renly, who had sex with you,” Thoros finished cheerfully and clinked their newly refilled glasses. “Bed brothers!”</p>
<p>A fourth thing about Thoros was that he wasn’t entirely straight.</p>
<p>In the days to come, Beric tried to firmly squash that knowledge and the associated and not entirely welcome feelings it sparked. Because the last thing he wanted to do was mess up their friendship. Because their friendship was basically the best thing in his life. And if he did something to ruin that, like say come on to a friend who wasn’t interested and taint every further interaction they ever had with that awkwardness, he would never forgive himself. No, definitely best to keep his mouth shut.</p>
<p>And to that resolve, Beric managed to hold. Even when Thoros would get drunk and cuddly and lean his head against Beric’s shoulder. Or when he would get excited about some legal point and put his hand on Beric’s leg. </p>
<p>That was until Beric’s promotion. It had happened rather oddly. He had been researching case law on one of the ancient computers in their library nook to help Oakheart with an upcoming trial when there was a crashing sound and a shout.</p>
<p>Beric hurried out to discover Meryn Trant on the floor, against the glass wall of the conference room, bleeding from the mouth and the side of his head. Jaime Lannister stood over him, breathing heavily. Behind them, a small waiflike girl with dark hair and large dark eyes peeked out from the room, looking frightened.</p>
<p>“You disgusting worm!” Lannister snarled down at Trant. “This is your last day.”</p>
<p>“It was a misunderstanding,” Trant hissed, rubbing his jaw. “And you don’t have the authority to fire me.”</p>
<p>Beric could see the girl behind them was crying silently, and pushed past the confrontation.</p>
<p>“I’m so sorry, Miss,” he spoke soothingly, like he might comfort a startled horse. “Let’s get you out of here. How does a cup of tea sound?”</p>
<p>She looked up at him, makeup smudged by tear tracks and nodded wordlessly.</p>
<p>They were halfway down the block when Beric realized from a shiver that she hadn’t stopped to grab her jacket.</p>
<p>“Please take mine,” he draped it around her shoulders. “We’ll have your address in the computer system, I’ll have somebody drop off yours first thing tomorrow, Miss...”</p>
<p>“Pia,” she said shyly, her first word. A chipped tooth marred an otherwise sweet smile.</p>
<p>He bought her some tea, and sat with her until the shivering stopped.</p>
<p>“You need to know that I will report Ser Trant’s behavior,” Beric said firmly. “Whatever he did to scare you was inexcusable.”</p>
<p>“You don’t need to worry,” she shook her head. “Jaime will take care of it.”</p>
<p>She spoke with a familiarity and pride that Beric had never heard anyone use before when speaking of Jaime Lannister.</p>
<p>“Do you know him?”</p>
<p>“He saved my husband Peck’s life,” she said earnestly. “I owe him everything.”</p>
<p>Beric thought about the way her face shone when she spoke of him on the way back to the office. His own idealized picture of his boss had long been in tatters, but it was nice to know that some shred of it had been true.</p>
<p>The man himself was waiting when he got back, lifting an eyebrow at Beric’s missing jacket.</p>
<p>“Forget the dress code, Dondarrion?” He snipped. Beric gritted his teeth.</p>
<p>“We’re doing an office swap. Move your things to Trant’s old office. You’re on felonies. Trant will takeover your caseload in misdemeanors.”</p>
<p>Trant, his bloody lip now puffed to a grotesque size, nodded stiffly at Beric.</p>
<p>Beric stared dumbly at Jaime Lannister.</p>
<p>“Congrats on the promotion,” he smirked and went back into his office.</p>
<p>“CONGRATULATIONS!!!” Thoros was predictably more enthusiastic. He jumped into Beric’s arms, and Beric laughingly toppled over, Thoros on his chest.</p>
<p>“Ow?” Beric mockingly protested.</p>
<p>“A promotion in eight months,” Thoros grinned down at him, their faces inches away from each other. “You’re brilliant.”</p>
<p>“I’m not sure it was a promotion for me so much as a demotion for Trant. But thanks.” Beric gently extricated himself out from under his friend.</p>
<p>“You know what this means, right?!” Thoros stood and stretched out his hand. Beric took it.</p>
<p>“DRINKS!” Thoros pulled him to his feet.</p>
<p>They started at the Dragonpit, and then ventured further afield, to Thoros’ favorite dives.</p>
<p>By the third place, Beric had the strange feeling that he was looking at the world from the bottom of a bowl. Or maybe a glass. Everything felt happy and good but very distant.</p>
<p>“You know I was right,” Thoros ruffled his hair.</p>
<p>“You’re always right,” Beric smiled at him sleepily. “What about this time?”</p>
<p>“That you would last more than six months.”</p>
<p>Beric blushed. He remembered how sad and lost he’d felt that first night they met. How much happier he was now.</p>
<p>“It’s because of you though,” he assured him. “I wouldn’t have made it without you.”</p>
<p>“You would have,” Thoros shook his head. “You like being a knight prosecutor too much to give it up because of some assholes.”</p>
<p>Beric let out a puff of exasperated air. Why couldn’t he see how much he meant to Beric?</p>
<p>“You mean so much to me,” Beric hiccuped.</p>
<p>“Okay kid. Time for bed I think,” Thoros laughed. “Shall we put you in a cab home?”</p>
<p>“NOOO!” Beric protested. </p>
<p>“I can’t believe I don’t have your address. Alright, you’re coming home with me,” Thoros sighed dramatically. “Grab your stuff.”</p>
<p>This was happening. Right? He said you’re coming home with me. Beric had never been to his house either.</p>
<p>It turned out it was only a few blocks away, although in their awkward drunken shuffling, Beric’s arm thrown over Thoros’ shoulders, it took significantly longer. Beric let his head loll in the crook of Thoros’ neck, wrinkling his nose as a stray strand of hair tickled him.</p>
<p>Thoros’ house was a real house, not an apartment building. With a fancy security gate for the car that Thoros didn’t seem to own. Thoros mashed the security pad tiredly. Beric was amused to note that his passcode was 1-1-1-1-1-1. </p>
<p>“It’s so big,” Beric stared at the house, mouth half open. </p>
<p>“It was a present from a client.”</p>
<p>“A client gave you a HOUSE?”</p>
<p>“He did. It used to be his house and he wanted something bigger.”</p>
<p>“Bigger than this?!” Beric spun dazedly in the driveway. Dizzy, he was forced to sit down.</p>
<p>“Mmm. Much.” Thoros tugged him to his feet again.</p>
<p>“Why didn’t he sell it?!”</p>
<p>“Probably there are some bodies buried in the backyard.”</p>
<p>“...you have a backyard?!”</p>
<p>Thoros opened the door, and ushered him into a vast den. There was a large wrap-around leather couch and an enormous plasma television. </p>
<p>“I’d offer you the guest room, but it’s currently occupied,” Thoros said. “I’ll get you some blankets and some pillows and you can make a nest on the couch. Back when this was not my house, I spent several comfortable nights on that couch.”</p>
<p>“The couch?” Beric scrunched his face in confusion. Wasn’t this supposed to go differently?</p>
<p>Thoros had already vanished to get the aforementioned items.</p>
<p>How had this gotten so muddled? What could he do to straighten this out?</p>
<p>Thoros came back, arms full of blankets.</p>
<p>“I was serious before Thoros,” Beric pouted.</p>
<p>“Hmm?”</p>
<p>“I think I’m in love with you,” Beric said and then he put his hands on his shoulders and kissed him.</p>
<p>Thoros dropped the blankets.</p>
<p>And then he gently pushed him off.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to be something you’ll regret kid,” he said. Then he walked back upstairs.</p>
<p>Beric picked up his blankets, and fell back on the couch.</p>
<p>Fuck. What did he just do?</p>
<p>He woke up in the morning to someone poking him. A skinny boy with large eyes and a ridiculously terrible haircut was crouching over him</p>
<p>“Are you dead?” </p>
<p>“No,” Beric stared at him bewildered.</p>
<p>“Arry, get off of him,” Thoros shouted from another room. </p>
<p>Beric flinched at the sound of his voice, the memories of the night coming flooding back. He’d done exactly what he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do. He’d come on to his best friend and been shot down. And now it was going to be terrible, everything was going to be ruined.</p>
<p>Another boy, this one significantly chubbier, came walking in.</p>
<p>“Arry, the pancakes are almost ready.”</p>
<p>The big eyed boy immediately hopped off the couch and the two vanished into the kitchen.</p>
<p>“Sorry about her,” Thoros came in, wearing a very stained apron. “Social skills of a feral raccoon, that one.”</p>
<p>“Her?” Beric raised an eyebrow. </p>
<p>“The haircut threw you off? My guess is she did it herself. I think she likes people to think she’s a boy. Probably less dangerous for her on the streets,” Thoros said easily.</p>
<p>Beric swallowed. Thoros seemed very unconcerned by the events of last night. If things were awkward, it seemed entirely on Beric’s end. But didn’t he owe him something? Some acknowledgement that he was an idiot?</p>
<p>“Look,” Beric swallowed again. “About last night...”</p>
<p>“You were drunk and confused,” Thoros grinned. “Think nothing of it.”</p>
<p>Beric gave him a wan smile.</p>
<p>“So tell me these kids aren’t yours.”</p>
<p>Think nothing of it, he told himself sternly as Thoros explained how Lommy and his friends Hot Pie, Arry and Gendry came to be kind of living at his house.</p>
<p>Think nothing of how Thoros felt, pressed against him. How he looked looking up with that half smile when Beric had caught his shoulders. How for that brief moment, brief but not imagined, it had felt when Thoros kissed him back.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Things had mostly normalized between Beric and Thoros. They never spoke of that night. Beric did come to be a regular at Thoros’ bizarre gift house along with the rest of his strange adopted family.</p>
<p>The children (Beric couldn’t help but think of all of them as children, though Gendry Waters had to be at least seventeen) came and went. They had all liberated themselves from various foster homes and spent much of their time on the streets. Thoros seemed to occupy himself very little with their lives other than having given them keys to the house and making sure they had enough to eat while they were there. Beric tried to do better.</p>
<p>“Don’t you want to go to school and learn things so you can get a good job?” He asked Arry as he cooked them all a beef ragu. </p>
<p>“Don’t need school for a job,” the girl reached for the pot with a spoon. He swatted her hand away.</p>
<p>“It‘s too hot, you’ll burn your tongue,” he warned her. “And you most certainly do. What does your father do?”</p>
<p>“Dead,” she said flatly.</p>
<p>“Well what about your mother?”</p>
<p>“Dead,” Arry shrugged and reached for the pot again. He swatted her hand again.</p>
<p>Beric sighed.</p>
<p>“Both of my parents are dead too you know,” he sat next to her. “That’s more reason to go to school. If something goes wrong, if you get hurt, you don’t have your parents to look out for you. You need a job with health insurance, a job you’ll get by going to school.”</p>
<p>Arry stuck her lower lip out and started to edge toward the pot again.</p>
<p>“Just let her, that’s the only way she’ll quit,” Thoros walked over as Beric started to move to stop her.</p>
<p>With a triumphant look, Arry immediately stuck her spoon into the pot and took a slurp.</p>
<p>“OWWW!” She yelped as she was promptly scalded.</p>
<p>Beric sighed.</p>
<p>“Live and learn kiddo,” Thoros teased, and she retreated, glaring sullenly.</p>
<p>“You are a terrible authority figure,” he told Thoros. </p>
<p>“I didn’t know that. About your parents.” Thoros ignored him.</p>
<p>“I didn’t tell you. It’s in the past,” Beric shrugged. “I came to King’s Landing after my mother died. There was nothing left in Blackhaven for me anymore.”</p>
<p>“And you’re glad you came?” Thoros asked hopefully.</p>
<p>“Very,” Beric smiled back. It had been just over a year now, which was mildly amazing.</p>
<p>Thoros helped himself to a spoonful of the ragu.</p>
<p>“Wait—“</p>
<p>“OW!”</p>
<p>It hadn’t been a lie though. Even if Thoros had turned him down, even if they were never going to be anything but friends, Beric had never been happier. He had been handling a series of narcotics cases, racking up a streak of wins for the state, and Beric felt like he was making a difference for the citizens of King’s Landing. He woke up every morning excited to go to the office and he finished work at night excited to get drinks with Thoros or cook a big dinner for the goonies.</p>
<p>It was on his way to one such dinner that he caught an elevator to discover Trant already inside. Beric looked down. Ever since his demotion, Trant had been unbearable. Unable to take his frustrations out on the architect of his demise, Jaime Lannister, Trant instead took every opportunity to needle Beric.</p>
<p>“Heard your boyfriend had a big win in court today,” Trant leaned over with an ugly smirk.</p>
<p>“Thoros and I aren’t a couple,” Beric said quietly, partly to conceal his surprise. He hadn’t known Thoros had a trial coming up.</p>
<p>“Another Baratheon goon, back on the street. You must be so proud.”</p>
<p>Beric frowned in confusion. Baratheon. That had been Thoros’ famous case. Back before Robert Baratheon had died, Thoros had gotten him off for killing Rhaegar Targaryen.</p>
<p>“Oh you didn’t know?” Trant leered. “That’s how your boyfriend makes all his money. He’s a lawyer for the mob. In Tywin Lannister’s pocket as much as the rest of us. So you can pretend your shit doesn’t stink Dondarrion. Hell, maybe it doesn’t. But your boyfriend’s reeks.”</p>
<p>“I am quite sure I don’t know what you mean,” Beric said stiffly. The elevator door opened.</p>
<p>“Maybe you should ask him about Pyke then,” Trant stepped out. “That should clear up some confusion.”</p>
<p>Beric brooded about the comment through dicing the parsley for the salmon he was cooking.</p>
<p>“I hate to know what the parsley did to you,” Thoros eyed his angry chopping as he produced a glass of wine. “Some sustenance for the chef?”</p>
<p>“Just Trant being an asshole at work,” Beric forced his hands to unclench and accepted the glass with a grateful smile. Still the uneasy feeling in his stomach didn’t quite go away.</p>
<p>“When you said that a client gave you this house, who was the client?”</p>
<p>Thoros’ own smile faded slightly. </p>
<p>“Robert Baratheon. What exactly was Trant saying?”</p>
<p>“So when you said there were probably bodies in the backyard, you were...”</p>
<p>“Being quite serious.”</p>
<p>“Right,” Beric looked down.</p>
<p>“What did Trant say?” Thoros contorted his body so he was once more within Beric’s field of vision. Beric tried to smile at his goofy brilliant friend who protected the people nobody else cared to help.</p>
<p>“That you worked for the Baratheon crime family. That you were in Tywin Lannister’s pocket. Um and he said something about Pyke.”</p>
<p>“Right,” Thoros turned and walked back over to the bottle of wine on the counter. He pulled the cork out with his teeth and took a swig. He looked rather tired and pale, Beric realized with a pang.</p>
<p>“You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” Beric blurted. I don’t care what you do, I love you, he wanted to add. But didn’t, because they weren’t thinking about that.</p>
<p>“But I want to,” Thoros said quietly, putting the bottle down. “I’m sorry, I never lied about it but I went out of my way not to bring it up and I’m sorry.” </p>
<p>“It’s fine,” Beric tried to shrug. </p>
<p>“Beric, my life is hilariously fucked up and believe it or not, it’s a lot better than it was. Did you ever wonder how I went from being a teenage runaway on the streets of King’s Landing to being a lawyer? Where I even got the money to go to school and get my law degree?”</p>
<p>Beric had assumed he had qualified for a scholarship somehow, he was brilliant, but a Thoros only smiled sadly.</p>
<p>“It turns out that not a lot of places are willing to employ an undocumented immigrant minor. And of those place, organized crime pays by far the best. So at sixteen and seventeen I was working for the Baratheons and I ended up working mostly for Robert. We were the same age, he’d just been called back from school in the Vale when his parents died. We were both kids without parents who were in way over our heads. And then the turf war with the Targaryens started heating up and people were dying and Robert... Robert sent me to law school in Essos. Said he needed a good lawyer more than he needed a dead friend. He paid for my tuition and there is very little doubt in my mind that he saved my life.”</p>
<p>Thoros looked out the window.</p>
<p>“I’m not saying this to excuse my actions, but it’s kind of important to the story. Robert Baratheon was not a good man, especially not toward the end. But he was a very good friend, even at the end. He was generous and loyal and he saved my life. He would have taken a bullet for me, for any of his friends, without even thinking about it. So when things started... going bad, I guess, it just took me longer than it should have to realize it. And if he hadn’t died, I don’t know that I would have ever really come to grips with it. He was just... you just liked him. He was the kind of person you wanted to believe in.”</p>
<p>Beric remembered Renly’s effortless magnetism, the trick he had of making you feel like you were the only person in the room. If Robert had had even a fraction of that, Beric could see how he might have been an easy person to believe in.</p>
<p>“So I came back at twenty-two with my law degree and I was getting his buddies released on bail, getting police evidence thrown out, countersuing for police harassment, and I was having the time of my life. It was just... fun I guess. Fun to win, fun to show up those fancy pricks with their fancy law degrees, fun to help a friend to whom I owed an unpayable debt. And Robert was making money hand over fist, and we were the little guys going up against the Targaryen machine, and it was new and exciting and we were winning. When I defended Robert in that murder trial, I didn’t have the slightest doubt in my mind that it was self-defense. Robert wasn’t a cold-blooded killer, he was my friend. They’d had bad blood for years, the two families were at war. I defended him and we won and then the Lannisters stepped in and took out the entire Targaryen family.”</p>
<p>Thoros took another gulp of wine.</p>
<p>“It didn’t change much at first. Robert was married to Tywin Lannister’s daughter you know, and they backed him and next thing you knew he was running King’s Landing. But he was still Robert. And sometimes there were killings, ugly reprisal shit, but Robert was always good at not seeing things he didn’t want to see. I just figured it was like that, you know?”</p>
<p>Beric of course didn’t know, as gang warfare was not a subject with which he was intimately familiar. </p>
<p>“But Pyke was... really bad. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it. I guess it wasn’t as big outside of the Iron Islands. Basically, the smuggling trade in the Iron Islands is controlled by the Greyjoy family. And the boss, Balon Greyjoy decides to cut Robert out of his share. So the Baratheons hit their warehouse on Pyke. It was really ugly. And Balon’s two older sons were there. Seventeen and fifteen. Like the same age as me and Robert when we started this shit,” Thoros gave a sad shrug.</p>
<p>“There’s nothing else you wouldn’t find in the records. Somebody sent their heads back to their father in a basket. And Robert said it wasn’t him and I believed him. I defended him on the charges, I put him on the stand. And he was like a little kid you know, the same shit-eating grin whenever he was lying and getting away with it. And I realized, I knew, I KNEW, he was lying on the stand. I KNEW that some of the witnesses were in his pocket. I could have said something, to opposing counsel, to the judge, to the press, and I didn’t. Two kids died scared and alone, and if Robert didn’t pull the trigger, he knew damn well who did and he sure as fuck gave the order. And I beat the charge and he walked scot-free and he gave me this fucking house.”</p>
<p>“You didn’t know for sure,” Beric said timidly. Thoros shook his head wearily.</p>
<p>“I did. I knew Robert inside and out. He did it. He did it and I don’t think he lost a second’s sleep over it. And it was bad and getting worse, and I never said a goddamn thing. That was the only time where I stood up in front of a judge and lied knowing I was lying, but I’m sure there were other times. I got better at not looking too closely. I guess that was another thing Robert and I had in common.”</p>
<p>The salmon was done and Beric absently took it out of the oven, carefully divided it onto six plates.</p>
<p>“So Robert died, and the worst part was that I was happy. He saved my life. He was my best friend. And he wrapped his car around a tree and all I could think was that I was finally free. But it doesn’t really work like that. Because once you start doing work for the mob, you can’t really politely say I don’t do that sort of thing anymore. At least not without royally pissing off Tywin Lannister. And people tend to live a lot longer when they don’t piss off Tywin Lannister.”</p>
<p>“So your trial today...”</p>
<p>“Some low-level enforcer. Guilty as sin. And I hate that I’m doing it, and I know it goes against everything you—everything we believe in. And I’ve been trying to cut back, reduce that part of my caseload, focus on cases where I’m actually doing some fucking good. But once you’re in Tywin Lannister’s Rolodex, you’re kind of stuck. You can’t say no if he asks. I guess I’m lucky that I don’t get asked very often, and I think the more time that goes by, the more they use Lannister people not Baratheon people, and they’ll just forget about me altogether. There are loads of better lawyers.”</p>
<p>“There aren’t,” Beric said immediately.</p>
<p>“Well there are loads of roughly equivalent lawyers who are more... Lannister brand I guess. But there you have it. Willingness to adopt strange children and occasional mopey Stormlanders aside, I’m a pretty scummy human being.”</p>
<p>“You’re not,” Beric caught his arm, holding his gaze. “You’re the best person I know. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to help but...”</p>
<p>“I don’t think there is,” Thoros cut him off.</p>
<p>“Well I would do it. I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t talk to me about this,” Beric said, picking up some plates to take to the dining room. “I hope you know you can talk to me about anything.”</p>
<p>“I do know that,” Thoros took the plates from him, their fingers brushing. “I just get tired of always being a fuck up. It was nice to be somebody’s white knight for a change.”</p>
<p>“Everyone needs saving occasionally,” Beric gave him a sad smile. “Even knights.”</p>
<p>“Are we eating, like ever?” Lommy demanded, walking into the kitchen.</p>
<p>“You mean are you eating my food for free cooked by my friend for free in my house where you live for free?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I’m starving!” </p>
<p>So maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise when a few months later, Beric showed up to court for one of his ongoing narcotics cases and Thoros was standing on the other side.</p>
<p>Unlike their prior face-off in court, Thoros did not look like he had dressed himself in the prior evening’s clothes. He was wearing a neatly pressed suit that Beric had never seen before and he had shaved. He was wearing glasses, which Beric knew he needed but hated, preferring to squint at the world instead. Only the top-knot remained stubbornly the same. All in all, it was rather disconcerting, especially when Thoros failed to return Beric’s smile of greeting.</p>
<p>“Who are you?” Judge Qyburn demanded. The trial has been going for a week now, and changes in counsel were unusual.</p>
<p>“Thoros Myr, your honor. Mr. Bolton respectfully petitions the court for a change in representation. Walder Frey had a heart attack last night.”</p>
<p>“How dreadful,” Qyburn clucked his tongue sympathetically. “Do you need a continuance?”</p>
<p>“No your honor,” Thoros looked blank, with none of the energy that had characterized his previous case. “We are ready to proceed.”</p>
<p>Blank or not, he proceeded to methodically destroy the case that Beric had spent months building against Roose Bolton. Even where Beric thought he’d successfully argued Thoros’ evidentiary objections to a standstill, Qyburn sided with him at every turn. </p>
<p>After yet another cache of wildfire was thrown out for failure to establish a proper chain of custody, Qyburn recessed court for the day. It was all Beric could do not to bury his head in his hands. When he looked up, Thoros had already left the courtroom. </p>
<p>It was improper of course, for opposing counsel to be socializing while a trail was ongoing. All the same, the misery of watching this case slip away from him was deepened over the ensuing weeks by the fact that Thoros seemed to be purposely avoiding him.</p>
<p>“Madame Foreperson, do you have a verdict?” Qyburn asked courteously as the jury filed back in. Beric kept his face a careful blank, but his stomach sank. They were back much too early.</p>
<p>“We do,” the woman said, her hard features set. Barbrey Dustin, Beric’s brain recited. Juror number eight. In her forties, widow. He hadn’t struck her because she’d practically crackled with righteous indignation when he’d asked her about her views on drug use. The defense hadn’t struck her because women were perceived as less likely to convict than men except in rape cases.</p>
<p>“On the four counts of racketeering, we find the defendant... not guilty. On the six counts of conspiracy, we find the defendant... not guilty. On the sixteen counts of possession with intent to distribute, we find the defendant... not guilty.” Beric tried not to flinch, tried to let the words wash over him like water. That was why he was surprised when she finished with, “on the count of obstructing a police investigation, we find the defendant... guilty.”</p>
<p>Qyburn also seemed mildly surprised, his gentle voice breaking in.</p>
<p>“Did I hear you right? Guilty on obstruction?”</p>
<p>“Yes your honor.”</p>
<p>Well he’d gotten something. Beric tried to cling to that scrap of cold comfort. Obstruction had a recommended sentencing guideline of eighteen months to three years. If it got Roose Bolton and his drugs off the streets for three years, surely the North would be a better place.</p>
<p>There was a brief recess before they returned for sentencing.</p>
<p>“Mitigating factors, Mr. Myr?” Qyburn asked, peering down at them.</p>
<p>“No prior criminal record. Single father of two boys. Pillar of the community,” Thoros said tiredly and then sat back down.</p>
<p>Beric raised an eyebrow. He had sat in on plenty of Thoros’ trials. There was nothing Thoros loved more than a good sentencing hearing. He could talk extemporaneously for thirty minutes about the plight of a mother working the streets to put food on her children’s plates or how childhood trauma and PTSD had permanently scarred a drug addict’s life. Three sentences? Barely even sentences. </p>
<p>Qyburn apparently found them more persuasive than Beric did.</p>
<p>“Given these mitigating factors, I sentence Mr. Bolton to time served,” he said, rubbing his chin.</p>
<p>Beric’s jaw dropped.</p>
<p>“Time served?! You’re letting him walk?!”</p>
<p>“Now now counselor,” Qyburn raised an eyebrow. “He’s been in prison for three months. His boys are probably wondering where their father is.”</p>
<p>“His boys are teenagers! They know where their father is! And eighteen months is the minimum sentencing recommendation!”</p>
<p>“Key word being recommendation,” Qyburn looked back down at his papers, dismissing the conversation.</p>
<p>“I’m going to appeal your ruling,” Beric said through gritted teeth.</p>
<p>“Beric...” Thoros said in a warning tone. Beric ignored him.</p>
<p>“That would be... unwise, counselor,” Qyburn said in that same gentle tone of voice, indifferent gaze meeting Beric’s. </p>
<p>“You would have to prove his ruling was arbitrary and capricious, there’s not a judge alive that would put that on record,” Thoros whispered from his right.</p>
<p>“I’m appealing the ruling,” Beric repeated stoically.</p>
<p>“As you like,” Qyburn shrugged. “Mr. Bolton, you’re free to go.”</p>
<p>Roose Bolton stood, a quiet middle aged man with dark brown hair who for most of the trial had been something of a cipher to Beric. It had almost beggared belief that this was the man that had plunged the North into such disarray.</p>
<p>Their eyes met, Bolton’s an eerily pale blue. An expression of speculative curiosity on his features. Then he smiled and left. Beric shivered.</p>
<p>“Beric, you can’t appeal—“ Thoros started, but it was Beric’s turn to brush his friend off. He swung his jacket over his shoulder and turned away, although not in time to avoid seeing Thoros flinch.</p>
<p>“We’re not appealing the Bolton sentence,” Jaime Lannister announced later that afternoon, letting himself into Beric’s office. Beric looked up from his computer, where he had been typing the motion.</p>
<p>“Why not?!” Beric snapped.</p>
<p>“It can’t be won. We have limited time and resources and I’m not wasting them pissing off a judge that we need on our side. Dondarrion, you shouldn’t have even gotten a guilty verdict. Take the win and move on.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean I shouldn’t have gotten a guilty verdict?!”</p>
<p>“Meaning the good judge is my sister’s man and Bolton is my father’s. Frey had the jury paid off months ago, although it sounds like he tried to stiff them, per usual. Greedy bastard. You were never going to get this one. Drop it. Take the rest of the day off. Go have a drink or something.”</p>
<p>Beric couldn’t file a motion without the head of the department’s consent. So they had a brief staring match that Beric lost, and then he was stomping to the Dragonpit.</p>
<p>He was surprised, though he shouldn’t have been, to find Thoros at their table, clearly already well into his cups. Thoros had avoided the bar during the trial, but Beric supposed he didn’t feel the need to continue doing so.</p>
<p>“Did you know?!” Beric snapped, sitting down across from him.</p>
<p>Thoros looked at him slightly dazedly.</p>
<p>“Dunno what you’re talking about, but probably.”</p>
<p>“That the trial was fixed,” Beric growled.</p>
<p>“Not fixed particularly well. Fucking Freys.”</p>
<p>“Lannister won’t let me file the appeal.”</p>
<p>“Thank the gods for that. Beric, you need to stay away from these people. You can be a nuisance, but you never want to be more trouble than it would be to have you killed,” Thoros made an effort to get his eyes focused on Beric’s face.</p>
<p>“How can you just sit there and be okay with this?!” Beric thumped his fist so hard on the table that their drinks sloshed.</p>
<p>“What makes you think I’m okay?” Thoros put his hand on top of Beric’s fist across the table. “Beric, why do you think they asked me to fill in for fat ass Walder Frey after his heart attack? They know we’re friends. They’re sending you a fucking message. That they know who you spend time with and where you live. And you don’t seem to care, and that scares the shit out of me.”</p>
<p> Beric felt his anger abruptly melt.</p>
<p>“I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise,” he said earnestly. Thoros let out an exasperated huff of laughter.</p>
<p>“It’s not me I’m worried about, idiot.”</p>
<p>Beric looked at him in the dim light of the bar, his lopsided smile, the battered features. He wished he could tell him how perfect he was. </p>
<p>“Let’s get drunk,” he said instead.</p>
<p>“Super drunk,” Thoros agreed.</p>
<p>Beric reflected, as Thoros launched into the eleventh or twelfth refrain of a drinking song that he appeared to be making up as they walked, that he probably had never seen Thoros super drunk. It certainly helped that Thoros had gotten such a head start. </p>
<p>At any rate, Beric thought, as Thoros began shouting some lyrics about the maiden fair being covered in hair all down there, it was probably for the best that they had decided to crash at Beric’s apartment instead of Thoros’ place. The kids were plenty traumatized without Thoros’ drunken stabs at music.</p>
<p>“Sometimes I think how different things would have been if I had gone with my first plan when we met,” Thoros yawned, apparently giving up on his masterpiece.</p>
<p>“What was your first plan?” Beric asked idly, fumbling for the keys.</p>
<p>“Mind-blowing one night stand,” Thoros answered casually. </p>
<p>Beric dropped the keys. He bent to pick them up, aware that his face was burning red and grateful that it was probably too dark to tell. He picked them up to discover Thoros peering at him.</p>
<p>“Oh?” He squeaked uncertainly, getting the door open. Because just because you’re in love with someone and they’ve just casually admitted to thinking about hooking up with you doesn’t mean anything’s going to happen.</p>
<p>“Chyeah! But you got all flustered at my come ons and I realized you’re a much better person than me. And it’s for the best, because I’m a middle-aged drunk who works for organized crime and you’re...” Thoros flapped a hand.</p>
<p>“What?” Beric frowned.</p>
<p>“Young.”</p>
<p>“Nine years is not that big of a difference!” Beric growled. “You’re thirty-nine, I’m thirty, we are both adults.”</p>
<p>“Maybe that’s the wrong word then,” Thoros scrunched his face. “Innocent? That’s not quite it either though. Good. Like really really good. And I’m not. I don’t want to be something you’ll regret.”</p>
<p>Maybe it was him saying the exact same phrase he’d said all those months before, but it clicked.</p>
<p>“So you like me... and you’re attracted to me...” Beric started, trying to resist the urge to shake him. “But you don’t want to hook up with me because...”</p>
<p>“If I let you down or if something happened to you because of me, I don’t think I’d ever forgive myself,” Thoros said matter-of-factly.</p>
<p>Beric tried to breath in and out through his nose. Thoros tilted his head childishly and caught Beric’s sleeve.</p>
<p>“Are you mad?”</p>
<p>“I just think it’s very presumptuous of you to think you get to decide what’s best for me,” Beric said coldly. “It’s one thing if you don’t like me that way but don’t say you’re not hooking up with me for my own good. That’s such patronizing bullshit.”</p>
<p>Thoros dropped his sleeve.</p>
<p>“I know that I’m missing a lot of life experiences that you’ve had, and maybe I am some silly child rescue project of yours,” Beric swallowed. “But one thing I do know really well is what it’s like to lose someone before you’re ready. To lose somebody without telling them all the things you wanted to say. I love you, Thoros. I’m not confused, I love you. I have for a long time. And one thing I would never—could never—regret is what we have.”</p>
<p>He let out a breath of air he didn’t know he’d been holding. Thoros was still looking at him, head tilted, in the near-darkness of the apartment.</p>
<p>“You can have the bedroom,” Beric said after a pause, not really sure where to go from there.</p>
<p>Thoros grabbed his shirt by the collar to pull him down into a kiss.</p>
<p>Beric felt his lips melting against his own, and the heat was pooling in his stomach, and he pushed him back, unlacing Thoros’ hands from his collar and pinning them against the wall. He kissed him again, slower, taking his time, savoring that this was finally, really, actually happening. Thoros let out a breathy whine of frustration that was utterly unlike his usual sarcastic drawl, and Beric filed it into his drawer of things he was learning about his friend. This one with a little flare of possessiveness that embarrassed him, because he didn’t want anyone else discovering this fact, just him. He wanted that sound to be his sound, now and for always. Beric broke the kiss.</p>
<p>“Ber-ic?” Thoros’ hitched as Beric pulled at his shirt to suck at his collarbone.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to be a mind-blowing one night stand,” Beric lifted his head to tell him, and then returned to studying how the skin reddened beneath his tongue, how Thoros shivered under his questing fingers.</p>
<p>“How about... a mind-blowing stand... of indefinite duration,” Thoros managed, squirming as Beric teased him relentlessly.</p>
<p>Beric smiled against his neck.</p>
<p>“I could do that,” he said, finding the door knob to the bedroom, and walking Thoros backwards until they hit the bed.</p>
<p>“Just...” Thoros began tentatively. “Promise you won’t regret this?”</p>
<p>Beric kissed him and stopped.</p>
<p>“Promise you won’t leave?” He asked shyly.</p>
<p>Thoros laughed. </p>
<p>“We’re really fucked up.”</p>
<p>“Not yet, we’re not,” Beric smirked and pushed him back onto the bed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Beric woke the morning after with a splitting headache and deep anxiety. He was fairly sure that drunken promises extracted in the build up to sexual intercourse—which they’d had, twice—were not binding in a court of law. What if Thoros had changed his mind? He had been pretty open about not being very interested in relationships. Beric swallowed, looking at the man he was currently snuggled half on top of. </p>
<p>Breakfast. He should make breakfast in bed. Nobody could turn down breakfast in bed. </p>
<p>He extricated himself from a still deeply asleep Thoros, and padded into the kitchen.</p>
<p>What should he make?</p>
<p>Thoros usually made pancakes, but Beric suspected that it was because he wasn’t sure what else children ate. Eggs? Bacon? What if he did like a scramble thing with some potato hash and maybe a breakfast smoothie and...</p>
<p>“There you are,” Thoros yawned, padding into the kitchen.</p>
<p>Beric, who’d had the blender going and hadn’t heard his approach, yelped.</p>
<p>“Why aren’t you in bed?”</p>
<p>“Because I can sleep through many things, but extended blending activity isn’t one of them?” Thoros snagged one of the croissants that Beric had made. “Are we expecting more people? Do I have to put on pants?”</p>
<p>“No! I was making you breakfast in bed! Go back to bed!”</p>
<p>“There’s enough food here for an army,” Thoros goggled. “How long do you expect us to be in bed?”</p>
<p>“A long time?” Beric said hopefully.</p>
<p>“I want to think you’re planning a smoothie-fueled sex marathon, but I feel like whatever’s actually going on in your head is much sillier,” Thoros said sternly, rapping Beric between the eyes with his knuckles. “Knock knock. Open up. Why are trying to make me fatter than I already am?”</p>
<p>“Nobody can leave in the middle of breakfast in bed,” Beric scratched his head sheepishly. Now that he’d had some coffee, his plan didn’t make quite as much sense. But surely it had some merits?</p>
<p>“So you were scared I was going to sneak out in the morning, and your idea to avoid this was to make a lot of food so that it would be socially awkward for me to bail?”</p>
<p>Or maybe it didn’t. Beric shrugged half-heartedly.</p>
<p>Thoros sighed and then leaned forward and kissed Beric gently.</p>
<p>“I wasn’t planning on sneaking out. A promise is a promise. You’re stuck with me.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” Beric said, aware that his face had split into a silly grin. “Okay.”</p>
<p>“So am I allowed to sit in the kitchen while you finish this or are we going back to bed for a sex marathon?”</p>
<p>“Um either. Both?”</p>
<p>“Both.”</p>
<p>“Your apartment is different than I pictured it,” Thoros panted, lying on his back later.</p>
<p>“Mm,” Beric said, occupied with playing with the strands of Thoros’ hair that had come loose.</p>
<p>“It’s very minimalist. I kind of pictured you with a lot of books.”</p>
<p>“I hate my apartment,” Beric admitted, tugging another strand free.</p>
<p>“Stop it, my hair’s mussed enough,” Thoros huffed. </p>
<p>“It could be mussed more,” Beric pouted.</p>
<p>“I will have you know that this is how everybody in Myr wears their hair, and it’s normal and people don’t go around trying to pull it to pieces...”</p>
<p>Beric cut him off with a kiss.</p>
<p>“So why do live here if you hate it?” Thoros asked, having been successfully pacified.</p>
<p>“Where else would I go?” Beric shrugged. Thoros twisted onto his side and gave him a meaningful look.</p>
<p>“Move in with you?” Beric laughed. “Do all of your relationships move this fast?”</p>
<p>“Not including this one? Can’t divide by zero. Including this one? All of them.”</p>
<p>Beric blushed.</p>
<p>“I mean you basically spend every night with me anyway,” Thoros grinned.</p>
<p>“What will your children say?”</p>
<p>“They’re not MY children...” Thoros began peevishly before Beric cut him off once more.</p>
<p>“I thought you already lived here,” Arry said disinterestedly, watching him unpacking his clothes. She was playing with a knife, which made Beric slightly uneasy, although Thoros promised she had been going to school.</p>
<p>“Will you teach me how to make that soufflé you made last week?” Hot Pie asked, swinging his feet from where he was sitting on the counter, as Beric put his kitchenware into the mostly empty cupboards. </p>
<p>“Can I have ten bucks?” Lommy stuck his head through the bannister as Beric and Thoros struggled to move a couch through the hallway.</p>
<p>Gendry didn’t say anything at all, just sort of silently trailed after Beric, watching as he unloaded his limited belongings. The oldest of the children—almost an adult really—and the biggest, he was also the quietest. Arry seemed to be the only one who could bring him out of his shell. With the others, especially Beric and Thoros, he was sullen and suspicious.</p>
<p>That was why it was a surprise when after four hours of having Gendry ghost after him, the shaggy black haired boy cleared his throat. Beric looked up, but the boy only stared at him. His eyes were a very dark blue, and reminded Beric of somebody, though he couldn’t think who.</p>
<p>“Hi Gendry,” he smiled.</p>
<p>“...I’m glad you’re staying for good. He’s happier when you’re around,” the boy muttered. Then he walked away.</p>
<p>It turned out that Thoros was right. The wisdom of moving in with somebody after one night together aside, there was very little change to his routine. None of his office mates noticed or cared what he did with his free time. Thoros had apparently lost some kind of bet to Melisandre on the level of Beric’s interest, and on the few occasions when she joined them for drinks, it was with a smug smile.</p>
<p>The change was entirely in his head. He hadn’t realized until he found one again, how much he missed being part of a family. </p>
<p>It was watching Thoros, curled protectively around a bottle of rum and barricaded behind his books so nobody would see him wearing his glasses, trying to write a motion. The light that shone from Hot Pie’s face when he brought home an A in Home Economics, a light that not even Lommy’s teasing about boys not taking that class could dim. Or Lommy, who had been sneaking out early to shovel the snow off Nan Winter’s steps, and thought nobody knew.</p>
<p>“SHUT UP YOU STUPID BULL!” Arry screeched, rushing down the steps two at a time and down into the basement, where she slammed the door so hard the sound reverberated. Thoros’ careful wall of books collapsed. With a sigh, he took off his glasses and began to rebuild it.</p>
<p>Gendry came down a minute later, scowling mutinously when he found them all staring at him. With a grunt, he grabbed a jacket and went out the front door, giving it a slam of his own for good measure. Thoros’ wall collapsed once more.</p>
<p>“Lover’s quarrel,” said Hot Pie wisely, from where he had been sitting on the floor attempting to do his math homework.</p>
<p>“What would you know about it, virgin?” Lommy sneered.</p>
<p>“Fuck off!”</p>
<p>“Language,” Beric reprimanded, lifting his head from his own files.</p>
<p>“Shut up then! You’re a virgin too!”</p>
<p>“Am not!”</p>
<p>“Are too!” Hot Pie attempted to sit on Lommy’s head, having some advantage with his superior weight and Lommy’s bad leg. Finally, with a grunt, Lommy managed to hurl him into the desk that Thoros was sitting at. The books tumbled down for the third and final time.</p>
<p>“I despise you all,” Thoros announced, pocketing his glasses. “Beric, let’s go to that sports bar down the street until the virgins fall asleep.”</p>
<p>“It doesn’t count if you only have sex with each other!” Lommy sputtered, as Beric sighed and obediently gathered his things.</p>
<p>“You don’t think we should try to talk to Arry?”</p>
<p>“You can try. She likes you better anyway,” Thoros huffed.</p>
<p>Beric bit his tongue and waited until they were at the bar and Thoros had a beer in hand before he tried again.</p>
<p>“Don’t you think we should be doing more for them? I know you don’t want to contact child services, but is it even appropriate for Arry to be spending all her time with older boys? Gendry is graduating from high school soon, does he have a plan? Should we be trying to get him a job?”</p>
<p>“Stop,” Thoros said, in a fondly exasperated tone of voice. “You are getting too attached. We are not their parents. If we tried to be, they would run away. Probably half the reason they ran away from their foster families in the first place was authority issues. I speak from experience.”</p>
<p>“So we do nothing?” Beric was dubious. Thoros sighed and ruffled his hair.</p>
<p>“We’re not doing nothing. We’ve given them a safe warm place to live, we feed and clothe them, we keep them in school and out of the court system. It’s more than I had.”</p>
<p>Beric snuggled closer.</p>
<p>“And you deserved more than what you got.”</p>
<p>Thoros drained his glass.</p>
<p>“You can’t change the world, Beric.”</p>
<p>“But I can try,” Beric grinned, knowing Thoros was rapidly thawing. </p>
<p>“Ugh fine. I know a Qohorik guy on the Street of Steel who could use some help. I’ll recommend Gendry.”</p>
<p>Beric kissed him.</p>
<p>“But you’re talking to Arry about her period or whatever. I’m not getting near that little menace with a ten foot pole.”</p>
<p>When he had been miserable, time had seemed endless, an ocean to drown him in monotony. Now that it was precious, moments slid through his fingers, running together even as he tried to catch them. They might have lived happily ever after in that house with those people. But instead, Beric had the unexpected misfortune of meeting Tywin Lannister.</p>
<p>The office was in a shambles. Arys Oakheart, who had previously occupied the slot of most tolerable colleague, had been retroactively downgraded to the worst. Arys had accomplished this not-easy feat (Trant still routinely spilled coffee on any papers he left out and Payne had yet to say a word to him) by running away with Arianne Martell, the key witness in Oakheart’s murder trial against Gerold Dayne. The judge had declared a mistrial, there was an ongoing media circus to avoid on the way to work, and his entire load of upcoming cases had to be divvied up amongst the rest of them. The workload was so overwhelming that Jaime Lannister had temporarily undemoted Trant to help. </p>
<p>Beric currently was squinting at Oakheart’s illegible notes of a deposition, wondering if the judge would allow him to redepose on the grounds of terrible handwriting. He looked up when the door opened. </p>
<p>A tall slender man with gray hair in an impeccably tailored gray suit stepped in. Beric was quite sure the suit cost more than a government salary paid in a month. Was he a defense attorney, here for a meeting? They were supposed to register visitors in a shared calendar—he knew Swann had somebody in the conference room, fuck they’d be double booked—but they were all scrambling with this Arys debacle.</p>
<p>“Sir, may I help you?” Beric stood up and came out of his office, extending his hand, since no else appeared to have any intention of assisting the man.</p>
<p>He was momentarily taken aback by the coldness of the man’s blue-green gaze. An ice bucket to the soul, Thoros might have called it. But his handshake was polite and firm.</p>
<p>“I don’t know you,” the man said, scrutinizing him.</p>
<p>“Beric Dondarrion,” Beric offered helpfully. “Are you looking for someone? I can direct you—“</p>
<p>“I think you’ll find my father does not take direction very well,” Jaime drawled from behind them. </p>
<p>Beric stiffened, and slowly turned back to the man.</p>
<p>“I don’t know him,” Tywin Lannister, billionaire philanthropist business-owner and crime lord said coolly. “Why don’t I know him?”</p>
<p>“A Barristan Selmy hire,” Jaime answered lightly. Beric could not have said why—perhaps the set of his jaw—but he suddenly felt that his boss was nervous.</p>
<p>“Ah. The Bolton case.”</p>
<p>“That’s the one,” Jaime said. “It’s under control.”</p>
<p>“Is it? Roose Bolton,” Tywin suddenly swung his frigid gaze back to Beric, “is a personal friend of mine.”</p>
<p>“Who walked with time served,” Jaime cut in smoothly.</p>
<p>“You stated in court that you intended to appeal,” Tywin was still looking at Beric. </p>
<p>“But he didn’t,” Jaime put in. “I told you, it’s under control.”</p>
<p>“Jaime,” his father finally cut him a look. “I’m trying to have a conversation with Ser Dondarrion.”</p>
<p>“Why are you even here? I regret to inform you that it’s not take your elderly parent to work day. If you’ve shown up for some family bonding, I wish you would have called ahead. I try not to be sober for those ordeals, in fact—“</p>
<p>“I came to see what I’m getting for my money,” Tywin said, running his finger along a desk with a possessive nonchalance that made Beric’s skin crawl.</p>
<p>“I wasn’t aware that justice was for sale,” Beric said sweetly. He heard an intake of breath from Jaime behind him.</p>
<p>“Funny,” Tywin Lannister replied, in a tone of voice that indicated anything but. “This Arys debacle... who is getting the Hugh Vale murder?”</p>
<p>Beric’s mouth nearly dropped open, and only decades of engrained social etiquette kept it shut. Who did this man think he was, to come in here demanding confidential information?! Jaime would tear him a new one, the man was nothing if not witheringly sarcastic, he almost felt sorry for—</p>
<p>“I’m taking it,” Jaime said with a sneering grin.</p>
<p>“Oh I don’t think so,” Tywin raised an eyebrow. “And ruin your perfect record?” </p>
<p>He double tapped his finger against the desk.</p>
<p> “Why don’t you give it to Ser Dondarrion. If everything is, as you say, under control.”</p>
<p>“Beric’s on felonies,” Jaime replied tightly. </p>
<p>“Take him off of felonies. You are the head of the department,” Tywin gave them both a nasty smile. “I don’t plan to repeat myself again. Good day gentlemen.”</p>
<p>He walked out of the office briskly, leaving only Beric’s deeply disordered thoughts in his wake. Had Tywin Lannister just... assigned him a case?! What the fuck was that about?! Beric turned to see if Jaime shared even a fraction of his incredulity. Instead, he looked vaguely ill.</p>
<p>“I don’t think it’s appropriate to be sharing confidential staffing matters outside the office,” Beric ventured. “It goes without saying that you are better equipped to handle a murder trial, and I—“</p>
<p>“Shut up,” Jaime Lannister had his fingers pressed to his temples. Beric shut up. There was a long pause.</p>
<p>“Right, the case is unwinnable. Not only that, but, and I cannot emphasize this enough, IT SHOULD NOT BE WON,” Jaime stared him down. “Please tell me you understand.”</p>
<p>“I took an oath to try every case to the best of my ability,” Beric said stiffly.</p>
<p>Jaime made a strangled sound.</p>
<p>“It is a profound mystery to me how somebody as innocuous and inconsequential as you can be such a pain in my ass,” Jaime finally ground out. “I speak of course figuratively. Now get out of my sight. Go be a literal pain in Myr’s ass, for all I care. You should really be making the most of your last days on this planet.”</p>
<p>With that he stalked into his office and slammed the door.</p>
<p>It was Beric’s first murder trial, and he unfortunately came to the conclusion that Jaime Lannister might be right. The evidence was circumstantial at best.</p>
<p>Hugh Vale was a complete unknown. He’d grown up outside of Aerie, an only child to an elderly widow. When she’d died, he’d inherited a small fortune and moved to King’s Landing to spend it. He had no family, no real friends. He’d had a number of prior citations, mostly for drunk and disorderly conduct.</p>
<p>At some point three years ago, he had had a confrontation with an off-duty cop named Gregor Clegane. He had allegedly drawn a gun (found by his body) and Clegane had shot him. The self-defense case appeared air-tight.</p>
<p>True, the gun was unregistered, and a number of his acquaintances had expressed surprise that Hugh would carry around a gun. The general consensus was that he was more talk than action. And the placement of the gun had been... odd. By the right hand. And Hugh was left-handed.</p>
<p>But Gregor Clegane had been in the police force for more than fifteen years. His case record was spotless. There was no reason to think the man was lying. And if Hugh really didn’t know his way around guns, why wouldn’t he draw with the non-dominant hand, intending it more as some kind of dramatic gesture? Probably just a tragic accident.</p>
<p>But then why had Jaime said this case should be lost? Why had Tywin Lannister made the long trek to the prosecutor’s office to specifically inquire about this case?</p>
<p>He tried not to share confidential information with Thoros but there was no helping it.</p>
<p>“Have you ever heard of Hugh Vale?” He asked one night as they were watching television in bed.</p>
<p>“Nope,” Thoros answered. “Should I be jealous?”</p>
<p>“Hardly,” Beric said drily. “He‘s dead.”</p>
<p>“Happens to the best of us.”</p>
<p>“Do you know Gregor Clegane?”</p>
<p>Thoros turned off the television.</p>
<p>“Maybe you should start at the beginning,” he said, with none of his prior flippancy.</p>
<p>Beric gave the highlights, keenly aware that he had Thoros’ full attention.</p>
<p>“And you can’t get off the case?”</p>
<p>“Unlikely. Jaime Lannister gave it to me himself. None of the others would undermine him by taking it from me.”</p>
<p>“But it’s unwinnable?”</p>
<p>“In all likelihood. I don’t see how we get past reasonable doubt.”</p>
<p>“That’s good,” Thoros said blandly and then turned on the television again.</p>
<p>Beric frowned and turned the television off.</p>
<p>“What aren’t you telling me?”</p>
<p>Thoros straightened up from his half-slouched position on the bed, his normal good humor replaced by some kind of wariness that Beric didn’t understand.</p>
<p>“That some battles aren’t meant to be won.”</p>
<p>“If you don’t start speaking plainly, I am going to get annoyed,” Beric warned.</p>
<p>“How’s this for plainly? I have seen bodies when Gregor Clegane is done with them. It’s not a pretty sight. I don’t want to have to see yours.”</p>
<p>“When you were working for the Baratheons?”</p>
<p>“Once, maybe, yes. But a girl or two has gone missing from Chataya’s who was last seen in his company. He’s Lannister muscle, he’s police, and he is a sick fuck who thinks he’s untouchable.”</p>
<p>“Nobody’s above the law,” Beric frowned.</p>
<p>Thoros looked away.</p>
<p>“This is exactly why you shouldn’t be on this case. You like to tilt at dragons and here be monsters.”</p>
<p>“Then why did I get assigned it?” </p>
<p>“Tywin Lannister thinks he’s intimidating you. Which shows a profound misjudgment of your character.”</p>
<p>“Well it doesn’t matter,” Beric said after a minute. “The evidence isn’t there to get a conviction.”</p>
<p>“Thank the gods for that,” Thoros said tiredly. “But promise me you’ll tell me if that changes?”</p>
<p>Beric put his arm around him to pull him closer.</p>
<p>“Of course.”</p>
<p>Once Thoros had confirmed that Gregor Clegane was worth taking a second look at, Beric poured over his police record. There did seem to be a higher number of fatalities associated with him than a normal officer. But how could he, a lawyer looking at these case files some five, even ten years after the fact, prove something that people at the time hadn’t cared to investigate?</p>
<p>He even mustered the courage to take a picture of Clegane to Chataya’s and ask if anybody had encountered the policeman. An excruciatingly uncomfortable hour later, he established that nobody was willing to talk.</p>
<p>It was after that ordeal that Beric decided maybe he should take the afternoon off. </p>
<p>The house was quiet in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. Beric took a moment, as he made himself a cup of iced tea, to savor the peacefulness of it all. Then after a couple minutes, he got bored. The house was too big to be this empty.</p>
<p>It was a beautiful summer day—maybe he would just take his work outside and sit on the patio in the backyard. He moved his briefcase out, breathed in the tangled and overgrown patch of wilderness. He wondered if there really were bodies buried here. Perhaps this was exactly where he should be working on the Clegane case. The past had stayed buried long enough.</p>
<p>He worked for an hour or two, long enough to realize that he was getting rather warm and had long since finished his iced tea. Beric decided to get another glass. This was all rather pleasant. Sure the WiFi was slow, but at least he could stretch out. Nobody talked to him in the office anyway—he wondered if Jaime Lannister could be sold on the occasional work from home day. Honestly, he was a little surprised Thoros didn’t do it more often—although even as he thought that, he knew Thoros would never get anything done unless he was far from any distractions. Beric poured his tea and added some ice cubes for good measure. No, Thoros would end up wasting the day watching television or deciding some home improvement project had to be done immediately or cooking some ridiculously lavish three course dinner for everyone that necessitated buying a billion ingredients they would never use again. He pushed the screen door to the patio open with his free hand.</p>
<p>“Oh!” He started. Arry was at the table, leaning over one of the case files. Her hair had grown to about chin length—she was at least recognizably a girl—though she remained the same noiseless slip of a shadow she had always been. </p>
<p>She looked up when he opened the door, her gray eyes large and haunted.</p>
<p>“Who is he?” Arry whispered, lifting the photo of Gregor Clegane.</p>
<p>This was the story as Arry told it. Her family had been in a car accident that had sent their car off a bridge. Her parents and two of her brothers had died. The other brother had been left badly injured. She and her sister hadn’t been in the car. They had been fighting and had been left home as punishment. When she had visited her brother in the hospital, he’d told her that it hadn’t been an accident. That some truck had come out of nowhere to crash into them and drive them off the bridge. The next day he’d been moved to a remote psychiatric ward.</p>
<p>She and her sister were sent to live with their mother’s crazy sister. It was awful. Her aunt’s second husband was a total creep, she thought she was being watched, her aunt was a loon, her cousin a snotty brat... she decided to leave and get to the bottom of her family’s death. </p>
<p>She’d been doing some investigating and it had lead her to Harrenhall, a grim warehouse complex in Flea’s Bottom. It was long abandoned, used now mostly by junkies looking for a safe place to shoot up. Everything was for sale there, even information. She didn’t have any money, but she was lingering, asking questions, trying to learn who knew what. She was very good at not being seen.</p>
<p>There’d been a boy there. Micah. He’d been nice enough. Showed her how to steal from people who were too gone to notice. Never tried to get too close. He’d seen some boy beating up a girl in the park one day. The police had been offering a reward for information, he’d been so pleased he was going to make some money off of it. When he called, the officer had arranged to meet him at Harrenhall.</p>
<p>She’d been watching from a rafter above when the officer had grilled him. Could he identify the boy in a line up? Was he sure? Would he go on record? And then the officer shot him point blank in the face. There was no warning, just the terrible crack that echoed off the walls, so loud that it could have been inches from her ears. The officer had looked at the body, head near blown off, and then walked away.</p>
<p>“This was him,” Arry shook the photo in Beric’s face. “This was the officer.”</p>
<p>Things moved rapidly from there. Arry said it had been two years ago, in the fall. Beric pulled Clegane’s cases from that fall, looked for unsolved assaults with rewards. There was one, a Jeyne Poole. </p>
<p>It was unrelated to this case, of course, but if the defense put Clegane on the stand (and how could they not, he was the only person who could say it was self-defense), Beric could call Arry as a rebuttal witness. It would make the case. The jury would convict, for the old murder if not the new. Gregor Clegane was not a sympathetic character. And Arry had a spark to her. People wanted her to win.</p>
<p>“Arry, you have to know what you’re getting into,” Beric warned. “What we’re about to do could be very dangerous.”</p>
<p>“Good. So am I,” Arry growled.</p>
<p>He told Thoros after a quiet night when it was just them in the house. They were doing the dishes, Thoros elbow deep in bubbles as he scrubbed them clean and Beric drying.</p>
<p>“And then Mel said the judge could burn her alive before she would bow to that kind of discrimination... it was a hoot, you should come with me to one of her cases some time. I look forward to the day where a judge throws her in the slammer right with her client,” Thoros was talking cheerfully. A particularly emphatic scrub sent a bubble of dish soap into the air—Thoros gave it a hard blow to send it sailing toward Beric’s face. Beric arched an eyebrow, letting the bubble pop on his nose.</p>
<p>“You’re quiet,” Thoros nudged him when that failed to provoke a response.</p>
<p>“You know how you told me to tell you if anything changed in my case?” Beric asked hesitantly.</p>
<p>“I do,” Thoros looked quizzical.</p>
<p>Beric brought him up to date.</p>
<p>“You can’t put Arry on the stand,” Thoros said flatly. “You’ll get her killed.”</p>
<p>Beric swallowed.</p>
<p>“Rebuttal witness lists are reviewed by opposing counsel but they aren’t made public. I’m going to swamp them with rebuttal witnesses. Every forensic scientist and ballistics analyst I can find. They won’t go through them all, they won’t have time. Nobody will know about Arry until she testifies.”</p>
<p>“And then?” Thoros growled. “After she’s plopped herself on the witness stand and accused Tywin Lannister’s attack dog of murder?”</p>
<p>“She’s going into witness protection,” Beric said firmly. “She has a friend at the Braavosi embassy. There will be a plane waiting for her—she’ll be in Essos before they even leave the courthouse. New name, new papers. She’ll be no one.”</p>
<p>“And she’s okay with that?”</p>
<p>“It was her idea. She said there’s nothing left for her in King’s Landing.”</p>
<p>Thoros digested this.</p>
<p>“And what’s your plan?” </p>
<p>Beric blinked.</p>
<p>“My plan is to win this case and put away a murderer.”</p>
<p>“Do you honestly think that the Lannisters are going to be fine with you putting Clegane behind bars?”</p>
<p>“I’m doing my job. No I don’t, but I don’t see any way around this.”</p>
<p>“The way around this is to not call Arry as a witness, Beric,” Thoros rubbed his temples.</p>
<p>“And Clegane win? A killer goes free? He’ll kill again, it’s painfully obvious. What does that tell the people of King’s Landing? What does that tell Tywin Lannister? That he’s above the law, that nobody will stand up to him and tell him what’s right? I’m not wired that way, Thoros.”</p>
<p>Thoros got up and walked into the other room. Beric followed after uncertainly, not sure what that response meant. </p>
<p>He had pulled out the desk drawer all the way and was feeling around the back. Then there was a revolver in his hands. </p>
<p>Beric stared at it, the ugly machinery of the weapon, snub-nosed and monstrous. It fit easily into Thoros’ hand, angled at the ground. It wasn’t for several seconds that Beric realized Thoros was trying to give him the gun.</p>
<p>“Take it, Beric,” Thoros said exasperatedly. “It won’t bite. And I’m not going to watch you die and do nothing. As you say, I’m not wired that way.”</p>
<p>Beric hesitantly took the gun. </p>
<p>“I don’t know how to use this—is this even registered to you? Should you have it in the house?”</p>
<p>“I’ll teach you, it is certainly not registered to me, and it’s a locked drawer. Arry is the only one with the brains to get in and she has the sense to leave it alone.”</p>
<p>In his hands, it felt impossibly heavy, a brutal reminded that it was possible to take a life without the intricate machinery of justice that Beric had given his life to uphold. Beric swallowed.</p>
<p>“I don’t know if I can,” he admitted.</p>
<p>Thoros smiled, a sardonic smirk. Standing there, his sleeves rolled up from washing dishes and his tie loose, he seemed completely relaxed and completely closed off, simultaneously. The way he had looked leaning against Judge Luwin’s bench, when Beric had wanted to shake him until some real emotion bled through.</p>
<p>Now of course he knew it was some kind of ingrained defense mechanism. That if Thoros could laugh at how impossibly shitty the world was, he was in on the joke. So even though Beric felt a flash of hurt that Thoros would find him and his principles so fucking amusing, that he was back to being nothing but a stupid kid, Beric tried to find the words to bridge the gap.</p>
<p>“I’ll do my best, I promise, I just—“ Beric trailed off as Thoros half shrugged, smile broadening. </p>
<p>“What’s so funny?” Beric couldn’t help the flicker of irritation at the casual dismissal.</p>
<p>“We asked each other the wrong things. You should have asked me not to be disappointed. And I should have asked you not to leave.”</p>
<p>Thoros turned on his heel and walked out. He didn’t bother slamming the door. The quiet click of the lock calmly closing behind him had its own sting of finality.</p>
<p>It turned out Beric was every bit the terrible shot that he expected to be. He set up some empty beer cans on the back fence, but kept missing. He wasn’t sure whether it was something about the way he was holding the gun or if the fact that his eyes kept watering was throwing him off.</p>
<p>Finally, scrubbing at his face with his sleeve, he gave up on the cans. He reloaded the gun and took aim at the large board nailed to the tree where Arry practiced throwing her knives. He hadn’t wanted to chip the wood on her target, but he was starting to sense that wouldn’t be a problem. Sure enough, his first shot went wide and several hours later, while he thought he had gotten mildly better at reloading the gun, he was still not consistently hitting the circle on the board. At least he had progressed to hitting the board itself?</p>
<p>The sun had set, casting the backyard in a sort of half twilight. Beric was fighting the soreness in his arm and the lump in his throat and how everything, just everything seemed to be falling apart. How sad that this perfect little pocket of a world he’d built had been so fragile. It had just taken pulling on one loose thread and now everything was unravelling. The screen door groaned open and smacked shut. </p>
<p>Beric stood, aimed, took another shot. This one winged the outer edge of the target. He rolled his shoulder, trying to loosen the building tension.</p>
<p>“Don’t use one hand,” Thoros said behind him. Beric turned. Thoros had lost the tie at some point, but was still wearing his shirt from work. His pupils were blown out and glassy, eyes almost black in the dim light, but that was the only indicator that he was quite drunk.</p>
<p>“Here,” Thoros held out his hand and Beric gave him the gun. “Left hand under the butt of the revolver to steady it. Right hand around the handle. Stand like this.”</p>
<p>He demonstrated, facing the cans. Then he blew them off the fence one by one with casual competence.</p>
<p>Beric looked down at the dirt. He was tired. He didn’t want to do this anymore. This being target practice, being fighting, being somebody tough and strong who he had never been in his life.</p>
<p>“You’re really good,” he offered at last. </p>
<p>“Years of practice. Not so much anymore I suppose. But it comes back. And it’s easy to pick up.” </p>
<p>Thoros handed the gun back and Beric tried to mimic the motion. Holding the gun with a second hand did seem to help his aim. After he hit a few in a row that were all bulls-eye adjacent, he looked back at Thoros for approval.</p>
<p>“Much better. Your hand is shaking though. Probably just tired. Let’s call it a day before the neighbors call the police,” Thoros offered a tired crooked grin.</p>
<p>Beric nodded, and then embarrassingly felt his eyes well up.</p>
<p>“Hey, it’s fine,” Thoros took the gun from him and put it down, then hugged him. Beric buried his head in Thoros shoulder, holding himself stiffly to avoid any further emotions from escaping. Thoros stood there patiently, until he was done.</p>
<p>“I love you, Thoros,” Beric finally whispered. “I don’t want to do anything to hurt that, to hurt this,” he lifted his head to look around them. “But I can’t do nothing either.”</p>
<p>“I know,” Thoros sighed. “Do you think I’m a shitty person for asking it of you?”</p>
<p>“No,” Beric said immediately. “I think if the situations were reversed, you would take Clegane down and I would be terrified.”</p>
<p>“Your faith in my willingness to risk my own skin is adorable,” Thoros drawled. Beric rolled his eyes and Thoros kissed him and for just a moment, it felt like they had rolled the clock back and this was just the silly banter they’d always had.</p>
<p>“I love you too,” Thoros said, and Beric realized with some surprise that this was the first time Thoros had said it out loud. He’d said it a thousand other ways, but this, the matter-of-fact assertion of it, felt different. “I love you and I want to keep you safe and I don’t care if it’s selfish and shitty. Let’s just say fuck it and run away,” he grinned, and even though Beric knew he was only half-joking, he smiled back. </p>
<p>“Where would we go?” He asked, shivering as Thoros nuzzled his neck, the scruff of his unshaven cheek scraping teasingly against him.</p>
<p>“Anywhere. Blackhaven. I want to see where little Beric grew up,” Thoros was unbuttoning his shirt as they talked.</p>
<p>“Don’t you think we should maybe go inside,” Beric managed, trying not to squirm as Thoros’ hands ran down his sides, stopping at his hips.</p>
<p>“That depends,” Thoros was working his belt free. “You haven’t said yes yet.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Beric groaned, as he felt Thoros’ hand wrapping around him. “Yes yes yes yes.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maybe in a different universe they would have woken up the next day and bought some train tickets and Beric would have dragged Thoros across the wild stormy moors of Blackhaven. </p>
<p>Instead, they woke up an hour late, and Thoros laughed at Beric as he frantically hopped on one foot trying to wrestle on his other shoe. This ended with Beric accusing Thoros of deliberately forgetting to set the alarm, and then Melisandre called to ask Thoros if he knew he had a client waiting in his office, and then it was Beric’s turn to laugh.</p>
<p>Beric was still buried in Arys Oakheart cases, Lommy had gotten into another fight at school and Thoros was trying to keep the school from expelling him, there was a leak in the roof somewhere, and Thoros kept promising to fix it and Beric told himself that if it wasn’t fixed in two weeks, he was calling a roofing company whether he could afford it or not.</p>
<p>Life just spun on, and the thought of walking away from it seemed as impossible as stopping the sun from rising on the next day. And the next and the next and the next. Until one day Beric was standing in a courtroom, staring down Gregor Clegane and his attorney, Walder Frey.</p>
<p>Frey (of Frey &amp; Frey &amp; Frey), appeared to have recovered from his heart attack nicely. That was, he was the same overweight, sullen looking man that Beric remember sneering at him from the Bolton trial. </p>
<p>Gregor Clegane, the defendant, was enormous. He looked far too large for the chair he was sitting in, meaty hands folded across the desk in some sick parody of a model student. It was only when his gaze met Beric’s that there was any shift from the complete blankness of his features. As their eyes met, Beric saw a twitch of something, a tightening of the jaw, a narrowing of the eyes. It was hatred, Beric realized, a total loathing that was disconcerting in its intensity, almost animalistic, and strangely frightening, coming as it was from somebody he’d never met in his life.</p>
<p>That hatred only seemed to curdle as Beric presented his case over the following days. The forensic scientist, the friends and acquaintances of Hugh Vale. The gun wasn’t registered to him, he’d never had a gun, he actually had a horror of violence as a coddled only child of an elderly widow. The gun was placed by his right hand, he was left-handed. Witnesses had seen him arguing with Clegane shortly before the alleged attempted assault. </p>
<p>It was all laid out neatly for the jury to follow, seemingly incontrovertible. Yet Beric knew the moment Clegane took the stand to testify that Hugh Vale had drawn the gun on him, there would be reasonable doubt. The dead made notoriously bad witnesses.</p>
<p>He had listed Arry as a rebuttal witness along with dozens of forensic experts on the last day the witness list was permitted to be amended. Walder Frey was effective enough in court—he could be relentlessly ruthless on cross examination—but the man was lazy. After one or two depositions, he would tire of hearing about gun powder residue and call it a day.</p>
<p>Sure enough, nobody had contacted Arry in the ensuing weeks, and Beric had never received a notice of deposition for her.</p>
<p>His ambush had been fully loaded. All it would take was Walder Frey and Gregor Clegane to walk right into it.</p>
<p>Gregor Clegane on the stand scowled at the jury. His story was simple and straightforward. Yes he had encountered Hugh Vale at a bar. Yes they had gotten into an argument. He had left the bar to deescalate the situation. He had not been lying in wait for Hugh Vale. He had forgotten his jacket. He was walking back for it when Hugh had stepped out of a side street, pulled a gun, and started to take aim. Self-defense. He turned away from his lawyer, away from the jury, and stared Beric down with an ugly smile.</p>
<p>Beric felt at this moment a sort of serene calm. Was Gregor Clegane angry? Well so was Beric Dondarrion. Gregor Clegane had the gall to think he was untouchable, the gall to put on a police officer’s uniform every day, to take the same oaths Beric did and spit on them. And he relied on the fact that people were afraid. Well Beric wasn’t afraid. Maybe he would lose, but he wasn’t afraid, and Gregor Clegane would fucking remember this.</p>
<p>“You’re a police officer, correct?” Beric began the cross examination politely.</p>
<p>“Said that, didn’t I?” Clegane sneered.</p>
<p>“Were you aware that Hugh Vale had come forward to testify in the murder of Jon Arryn?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“In fact he had come forward three days before you shot him.”</p>
<p>“Objection, your honor, I don’t hear a question,” Walder Frey interjected in a weaselly voice. Beric nodded to him affably.</p>
<p>“I direct you to prosecution Exhibit C, the visitor’s log at the King’s Landing police station on September 14, 2016. Clegane, would you read the fourth signature from the bottom?”</p>
<p>“Hugh Vale,” Clegane grunted after squinting at the page for a moment. </p>
<p>“And September 14, 2016 was three days before you shot him?”</p>
<p>“Yeah.”</p>
<p>“Did you have access to the visitor logs?”</p>
<p>“Yeah.”</p>
<p>“And it is your testimony that you did not know that he had come forward saying he had valuable information about Jon Arryn’s death?”</p>
<p>“No. Said it before. It wasn’t my case.”</p>
<p>“No it wasn’t, Mr. Clegane. And yet, isn’t it true that you checked out numerous pieces of evidence relating to the Arryn murder?”</p>
<p>“Objection, relevance, your honor,” Frey interjected.</p>
<p>“It is Mr. Clegane’s testimony that he had never met the victim before that night. I am merely exploring the extent to which Clegane was familiar with the Arryn murder investigation, your honor. As the evidence will show,” Beric was pretending to address the judge but his eyes were on the jury. “Clegane was quite familiar with the investigation. In fact he had repeatedly requested to be assigned to it. That he encountered the key witness in a bar a mere three days after that witness had come forward... an encounter which left the witness dead... and he never recognized him, well it strains credulity.”</p>
<p>“Objection overruled,” the judge said.</p>
<p>“Mr. Clegane, isn’t it true that in the six months that the Arryn investigation was ongoing, you checked out no fewer than seventeen pieces of evidence?”</p>
<p>“Don’t remember. Someone must’ve asked for them. Wasn’t my case.”</p>
<p>“But you wanted it to be your case didn’t you?” Beric pressed.</p>
<p>Clegane shrugged.</p>
<p>“Isn’t it true that you requested to be assigned to it on four separate occasions?”</p>
<p>“If you say so.”</p>
<p>“And who was assigned to that case?”</p>
<p>“I don’t remember.”</p>
<p>“If I may refresh your memory, it was Officer Ned Stark. And where is Officer Ned Stark now?”</p>
<p>“Objection, relevance,” Frey was on his feet again.</p>
<p>“Your honor, the relevance here is that people involved with cases that Clegane is interested in seem to have rather bad luck,” Beric said mildly.</p>
<p>“I’ll allow it for now, but you’re on a short leash counselor,” the judge warned.</p>
<p>“Where is Ned Stark now, Clegane?” Beric repeated patiently.</p>
<p>Clegane glowered.</p>
<p>“He’s dead.”</p>
<p>“Your honor, this is substantially more prejudicial than probative. Ned Stark died in a car accident, the matter is well known and of public record. To suggest Gregor Clegane had anything to do with it is absurd!” Frey was sputtering.</p>
<p>“Is it your client’s testimony that people involved in cases he takes an interest in do not routinely go missing?” Beric tried to sound surprised.</p>
<p>“Of course they don’t!” Frey snapped.</p>
<p>“If we might hear from the witness...” the judge interjected drily.</p>
<p>“They do not,” Clegane sneered at Beric Dondarrion.</p>
<p>“So you don’t murder witnesses in cases you’d prefer to see go unsolved?” Beric raised his eyebrows in a pretense of confusion.</p>
<p>“NO!” Clegane slammed a fist down near his microphone and the ensuing feedback temporarily deafened them all. It was into that silence that Beric spoke.</p>
<p>“Your honor, I would like to call a rebuttal witness.”</p>
<p>Everything went exactly as he and Arry had practiced. She told her story simply and straightforwardly. It being Arry, she did not cry, but Beric was sure that the jurors did not miss the slight tremor in her lip when she spoke about Micah’s death. </p>
<p>“And did you see the man who pulled the trigger?” Beric asked quietly.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Arry leaned forward and jabbed her finger at the defendant. “It was him right there.”</p>
<p>Frey barely crossed her, treating her as if she was a field of land mines. And then she was politely ushered out of the courtroom, taking the hand of a tall somber man with two-tone hair whom Beric had never seen before. An aide to the Braavosi ambassador, he presumed. And then she was gone.</p>
<p>There was another witness, a forensic scientist for the defense to explain why the blood spatter indicated a point blank shot when Clegane claimed that he had been standing yards away. But after the bombshell of Beric’s surprise witness, he doubted any of the jurors registered a word. The defense rested, with the understanding that closing statements would be next week.</p>
<p>“What the hell do you think you’re doing Dondarrion?” Frey tried to grab his arm as Beric packed to go. “We had an arrangement...”</p>
<p>“I don’t know who Tywin Lannister has an arrangement with, but it certainly isn’t me,” Beric cut him off coldly. He spun on his heel, aware that Walder Frey’s bleary gaze followed him.</p>
<p>It was a bright cloudless day, and Beric emerged from the courthouse into the blinding sunlight feeling rejuvenated. Thoros was in trial as well, a prostitute he was defending from what he swore was entrapment. Beric sent a good luck text complete with emojis, and then tilted his face back, letting the rays play upon his skin. He had done it. Oh there were closing statements to be sure, but he had seen the jurors’ faces. He had them in the palm of his hand. He knew it, the judge knew it, Frey knew it. Gregor Clegane might be a monster, but he was a monster who’d spend the rest of his life in prison.</p>
<p>His phone rang. He looked down, somewhat absurdly hoping it was Thoros. It was not.</p>
<p>“Ser Jaime,” Beric answered politely.</p>
<p>“What the fuck do you think you’re doing Dondarrion?!” The man barked. “Do you have even two brain cells in that head or is it just full of old Law and Order episodes?! Go back into the courtroom right now and file a motion for a continuance, say you’ve got cancer or something, we’ll figure this out, gods save me from idealists—“ Beric hung up. </p>
<p>The phone buzzed again. It was Jaime Lannister. With a burst of unexpected daring, Beric turned his phone off. </p>
<p>That meant he couldn’t reach Thoros of course. But that was okay, he knew what Thoros’ first stop after the courthouse would be. And you know what? Beric thought he could use a drink.</p>
<p>He walked into the Dragonpit with a swagger, for the first time proud of the golden pin on his lapel that marked him a knight prosecutor of King’s Landing. For the first time feeling like he deserved that title. He sipped a beer, savoring the cold drink and the dim cool feeling of the cavernous bar, a welcome respite from the sweltering weather outside and the courthouse with its lack of air conditioning. He read a newspaper, ordered a second beer. Lawyers gradually trickled in from outside, their petty victories and defeats all too often written across their faces. Beric got a third beer as the the Dragonpit began to fill up, and retreated from the bar itself to his and Thoros’ table.</p>
<p>It was well after the courthouse had closed for the day and well after Beric had nursed his fourth beer within an inch of its life that he was prepared to concede that the unthinkable had occurred. Thoros had gone home without stopping by the bar first. Maybe, Beric thought, paying the tab, he had hurried home to head how the trial was going. Beric hadn’t told him that this was the day he was putting Arry on the stand—he didn’t want Thoros to worry more than he could help it—but Thoros had been antsy all week. Funny he hadn’t called though. Beric glanced down at his phone’s black screen. Oh right.</p>
<p>He turned it on just as he was stepping out into the street, and it immediately came alive, vibrating in his hand like some kind of furious insect, rattling with the force of voicemail after voicemail. Beric winced when he saw how many Jaime Lannister had left him. Oh well. He could always listen to those later, when he had Thoros to distract him. And speaking of... Thoros had left nearly as many. Probably wondering where he was, each message a rambling stream of conscious that would bleed seamlessly into the next. Beric pressed play.</p>
<p>“Where the fuck are you?! Look actually that’s not important now. Clegane’s after you and you need to hide. Go somewhere nobody will recognize you. When you can get access to a pay phone, call me on the landline, it can’t be bugged. I’ll be waiting next to the phone, it doesn’t matter how long it takes,” Thoros’ voice wasn’t his usual meditative drawl at all, and Beric blinked through the haze of the beers to focus on the tight clipped words. “And whatever you do,” voicemail Thoros growled, “stay the fuck off the streets.”</p>
<p>The voicemail clicked off and Beric looked at the phone numbly. Everything was starting to click into place. The dozens of messages from Thoros and Jaime, why Thoros hadn’t come to the bar. Danger. He was in danger. He looked up and around wildly, as if Gregor Clegane might be standing across the street staring him down. Which was ridiculous. The only person standing across the street was a big man with a pale somewhat pasty face. </p>
<p>He had to hide. Thoros said go somewhere nobody knew him. Beric struck out toward the river. He’d find a hotel in the touristy district, somewhere where paying in cash wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. A hotel would have public phones as well. He should turn his cell phone off, they could use that to track you couldn’t they? Or was that the police? Beric stifled a not entirely sober giggle as he clicked it off. Was there really any difference?</p>
<p>A car that had passed him minutes earlier was parking up ahead. A man stepped out, crouching to look at his tire sorrowfully. Beric swallowed. Just because he couldn’t see the man’s face... it didn’t mean anything. Paranoid, he was paranoid. </p>
<p>As he pulled abreast of the man, the fellow straightened, tire iron still dangling limply from one hand. He turned, and Beric prepared to nod politely before hurrying on. </p>
<p>It was the pasty-faced man who had been watching him from earlier.</p>
<p>Beric barely had time to raise his hand before the tire iron lashed toward him. There was a blinding pain as it connected with his forearm, and then it bit again, this time striking squarely into his skull. The earth pitched toward him, and as everything went black, Beric remembered something Thoros had said once. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.</p>
<p>He woke in a warehouse somewhere. Consciousness returned in slow waves, each ebb leaving him wishing he were still asleep. His head was in blinding agony. The entire right side of his face was wet and he couldn’t open his eye. Think about other things. The warehouse. It was dark. Only one light, somewhere far above. The sound of water dripping somewhere. Distantly, men talking.</p>
<p>“... wanted him alive,” somebody was saying.</p>
<p>“He’s alive. Mostly.” Some sniggering. </p>
<p>There were footsteps, and Beric tried to appear as comatose as he was able. That strategy lasted approximately ten seconds, until he was backhanded across the face, his nose crunching like so much paper. Beric did not scream, a fact that mildly shocked him, but he did grunt and attempt to convulsively grab his face. His hands got approximately six inches before the metal of the handcuffs bit into them, jangling harshly against the chair he was on.</p>
<p>“Wakey wakey counselor,” Gregor Clegane leered, piggy eyes bright with malice. “Today’s gonna be a big day.”</p>
<p>Beric tried to spit defiantly, because yes he had seen every Law and Order episode and that’s what the hero always did. Instead, he managed a bubble of what looked like blood, which proceeded to pop pathetically against his face.</p>
<p>“Not much to say? That’s funny, because you were so fucking talkative in court,” Clegane had a police baton dangling from his hand, and he swung it hard into Beric’s side. There was an audible sound of a rib snapping, which oddly reached Beric’s brain a second before the pain hit. He did try to scream at that one, but there was no air left in his body to manage the task. The best he could do was a kind of hacking cough.</p>
<p>“That’s okay, it’s my turn to talk,” Clegane patted his cheek mockingly. His hand was red when he took it away.</p>
<p>“They say confession is good for the soul after all. And you were just so curious to know,” Clegane’s low growl paused as he struck Beric again with the baton, “...curiosity killed the cat I guess.” He gave a bark of laughter.</p>
<p>“So where to begin? I did kill Hugh Vale, because the snotty bastard was running his mouth to the wrong people. And I killed that little shit from Harrenhall. I didn’t kill Ned Stark, if you MUST know, but I know who did.” A third strike, and this one tipped the chair that Beric was cuffed to. It toppled sideways against the concrete floor, and Beric got a brief glimpse of the rest of the warehouse, the pasty-faced man from before smoking, a table with some papers.</p>
<p>Clegane hauled him and the chair upright by his hair. Beric felt his consciousness dimming again, but that just earned another smack back to reality.</p>
<p>“Where are you going counselor, we’re not near done yet,” Clegane smirked. “See Tywin Lannister has had enough of you. If you can’t be useful as a prosecutor, he thinks you can at least be useful as an example. Show everybody what happens when people try to go up against the Lannisters.”</p>
<p>He walked out of Beric’s field of vision, and returned with a long thick rope. A noose, Beric’s mind finally supplied, and then the fear hit, the adrenaline eating away at the pain that had dominated his thoughts until this point. He’s going to hang me, Beric realized, and his gut gave a queasy flip. No no no not that.</p>
<p>“I’m going to hang you,” Clegane announced completely unnecessarily. “And put your skinny carcass somewhere nice. I’m thinking the Dragonstone bridge, what about you?”</p>
<p>Beric was shaking as Clegane looped the rope around his throat.</p>
<p>“And then,” Clegane growled in his ear as he pulled the knot tight, “I’m going to go to that old Baratheon hideout and smoke out every last rat hiding there. I’ll kill those little boys quick, no gun, just snap their necks like chickens. I’m going to have that little girl, the one in court today. I’m going to fucking split her in two. I’ll shoot Myr in the stomach I think. Maybe I’ll do that first, and then have the girl so he can watch as he bleeds out. None of that’s orders. That’s just from me to you. What do you think of that?”</p>
<p>Beric looked at the man, leering at him, his face inches away. Then he rocked back in his chair and used the momentum to slam his head forward, crushing it into Clegane’s face.</p>
<p>There was a muffled curse as Clegane stumbled backwards. When he straightened, Beric noted with some satisfaction that his nose was now broken as well. Think about that, that he’d made him bleed, hold that image, not... not the other one that Clegane had tried to put there. It didn’t help that Arry was safe, that he hadn’t seen the boys in a couple days. Because he knew who would absolutely be there, who had promised to be there for as long it took. Beric squeezed his good eye shut to block out the image of Thoros dead, of Thoros shot through the stomach.</p>
<p>Clegane backhanded him again, a crack against the mouth that knocked a tooth loose. </p>
<p>“You fucking cunt,” Clegane hissed, rancid breath washing over Beric. “I wasn’t going to do this because it’s overkill and I don’t take fucking orders from Roose Bolton, but you know what?” Clegane produced a gun and placed it square against Beric’s shoulder.</p>
<p>“Roose Bolton sends his regards,” Clegane said and pulled the trigger.</p>
<p>When Beric woke again, it was only partially, and with the dim sense that this would be over soon. He was being dragged by his neck, the rope around his neck, Clegane was looping it to a rafter and he couldn’t breathe. It was some relief that it was going dark again, that he couldn’t hurt anymore than this spiraling pain from his neck and from his lungs, that this too would pass. He wondered if his parents would be waiting for him.</p>
<p> There was the crackle of gunfire on the edge of his rapidly shrinking awareness, then the pain in his neck abruptly vanished and his broken ribs screamed as his body gasped in breath after breath. Someone was loosening the rope around his neck, Clegane was charging another man, his body shuddering as he took a bullet and then another, and then both men went down. The rope was off his neck, his jacket was coming off and then he was turned on his back and Thoros’ face swam briefly into focus. Thoros was pushing down hard on the wound in his shoulder, and Beric felt the pain from far away. Everything felt far away now.</p>
<p>Thoros was saying something, what was it? Thoros bent toward him, stroking his hair, and Beric could catch fragments of the words.</p>
<p>“Don’t die, don’t die, you have to pull through, you have to get better, I promised you I wouldn’t leave you, you can’t go somewhere I can’t go, that’s not fair, Beric you have to live...” Thoros was crying, Beric realized. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Thoros cry. Beric didn’t want Thoros to be sad. He was still talking, but it was in a different language now, the mumbled words soothingly sing-song. Beric fell asleep to his voice, thinking if he had to go, in Thoros’ arms was probably what he would have picked anyway.</p>
<p>The next time Beric woke, it was not gradually but all at once. A sudden crashing of wakefulness, an awareness that there was something in his mouth gagging him, holding him down...</p>
<p>“Woah, I’m here,” Thoros’ face popped into his field of vision, dark circles under his eyes. He looked tired and careworn, and even as Beric forced himself to relax, he felt a pang of worry for Thoros, that he wasn’t taking care of himself, that he was pushing himself too hard. Thoros was absently stroking his hair.</p>
<p>“You need a breathing tube, that’s what’s in your mouth,” Thoros told him gently. “It’s not forever, just for a little while. Do you understand?”</p>
<p>Beric realized he was in a hospital, in a bed in a room by himself. Everything hurt, but in a distant, chemically dampened sort of way. He still couldn’t open his right eye. </p>
<p>“I’m here Beric, you’re safe, everything’s okay,” Thoros was saying into his hair. Beric finally nodded to show he understood, but Thoros still stood there with him, their fingers interlaced, until Beric fell asleep again.</p>
<p>Beric had four broken ribs, a shattered collarbone, a broken arm, damage to his trachea and a fractured skull. Was there anything else? Oh right, the eye. He’d lost his eye. </p>
<p>Beric tried not to look at his reflection, the first time he’d seen a mirror. It was awful. Beric didn’t think of himself as vain, but this was.... the heavily bruised mummy stared back with one blue eye from under its bandages. This was really bad.</p>
<p>“The bruising will go down,” Thoros had assured him, as if Beric had said his thoughts out loud. “There will be some scarring around the neck and where the bullet went through, but that’s it.”</p>
<p>And then he kissed the hand on Beric’s non-broken arm.</p>
<p>They celebrated with a shared cup of champagne that Thoros had smuggled in when the breathing tube could finally come out.</p>
<p>“First words in two weeks, better choose them carefully,” Thoros had teased as the nurse carefully extricated it.</p>
<p>Beric smiled at her gratefully and then turned to Thoros.</p>
<p>“I love you.”</p>
<p>“Ugh you’re so sappy,” Thoros blushed. “I love you too.”</p>
<p>Jaime Lannister came to visit three weeks in. He was carrying a potted cactus.</p>
<p>“I know it’s weird to get you a cactus. I wanted to get you wine, but I figured Myr would just drink it. And a bouquet is super gay. Um no offense. But cut flowers just die anyway, and what do you want a bunch of dead flowers in a vase for? It probably would just remind you of how close you came to croaking. I was going to get you an orchid, but those die too. Also did you know if you put them directly in the sun, they can burn? Like a sunburn for plants? The lady at the plant store told me, she was really helpful actually, if you don’t like the cactus I bet she can help me find—“</p>
<p>“Jaime,” Beric cut in gently. “Thank you for trying to save my life.”</p>
<p>Jaime Lannister, the famously silver-tongued bane of the courtroom, seemed utterly at a loss for words.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the day had yet to come when Thoros couldn’t think of something to say.</p>
<p>“A cactus is super weird. You should have just gone for the wine.”</p>
<p>“I like it,” Beric said immediately. “A cactus is a survivor.”</p>
<p>“Right,” Jaime gave him a shy smile. “I’ll just put it over here on the window.” He walked over. </p>
<p>“I actually came to take your statement and discuss some job things. You know me, all business,” he shrugged languidly.</p>
<p>“Of course,” Beric rolled his eyes. Eye.</p>
<p>“So Thoros already told the police how he tracked your cell phone and had a shootout with Clegane, killing him, before he was able to rescue you.”</p>
<p>“Wait what?” Beric frowned. </p>
<p>“I killed Clegane,” Thoros prompted. He smirked. “It was self-defense.”</p>
<p>“But, but...” Beric frowned, trying to sift through the fragments of memories from that night. “You didn’t. You went straight to me. It was that other guy who shot him, the big guy with the scars...”</p>
<p>“I told you this would happen,” Jaime sniffed at Thoros. Thoros tugged at his top-knot.</p>
<p>“Poor dear is traumatized.”</p>
<p>“Naturally.”</p>
<p>“And out of his mind on painkillers.”</p>
<p>“It goes without saying.”</p>
<p>“I am not!” Beric interjected petulantly.</p>
<p>“If for some reason you had turned your phone off, rendering me unable to track it, and if Jaime had called me to say he’d heard you’d been abducted, and if in order to find you I called in a favor with a friend would know where you had been taken... well, that friend would have known because he worked for the Lannisters, right? He really shouldn’t have taken me there at all. He definitely shouldn’t have shot and killed someone who he has hated for a very long time, someone he has never been able to act against because they have always been on the same team,” Thoros scratched his nose pensively. “If for some reason you had seen a second person with distinctive facial scarring, that could get that second person in a lot of trouble.”</p>
<p>“Think about it,” Jaime said smoothly.</p>
<p>Beric thought about it.</p>
<p>“Thoros shot him. It was self-defense,” he said slowly.</p>
<p>“Mmm, you finally grew some common sense,” Jaime arched an eyebrow. “What a pity it comes too late for me to benefit.”</p>
<p>Beric frowned.</p>
<p>“What’s that supposed to mean?”</p>
<p>“I’m reassigning you.”</p>
<p>“To misdemeanors?” Beric asked in confusion.</p>
<p>“No,” Jaime said. “To the Riverlands.”</p>
<p>“But the Riverlands doesn’t have its own Knight Prosecutor’s office,” Beric pointed out.</p>
<p>“Which has resulted in some of the highest crime rates in Westeros. I’m particularly concerned about recent gang activity from a group of individuals known as the Bloody Mummers. They think because they work for Roose Bolton, they’re untouchable. I think you could prove them wrong.”</p>
<p>“What?” Beric struggled for understand.</p>
<p>“I am creating a new office, and I am appointing you as the head. It’s a promotion, Dondarrion, can you at least try to look happy?”</p>
<p>“But I can’t move to the Riverlands, what about,” Beric trailed off looking at Thoros.</p>
<p>“Obviously you need someone to look out for you in your convalescence,” Thoros grinned. “I’ve been told I’m very nurturing.”</p>
<p>“But the house...”</p>
<p>“As of last week, I no longer own a house in King’s Landing.”</p>
<p>“You said it couldn’t be sold!”</p>
<p>“Mm. I deeded it to Gendry.”</p>
<p>“Gendry?” Beric tried to wrap his head around this knew information.</p>
<p>“Yup. I always meant to once he was legally an adult. Of course Lommy and Hot Pie can stay there as long as they like.”</p>
<p>Beric tried to wrap his head around this new and foreign state of affairs.</p>
<p>“So we’re...”</p>
<p>“Running away together. You did promise.”</p>
<p>“And bringing justice to the Riverlands,” Jaime tacked on pointedly.</p>
<p>“Right, um great,” Beric stammered. Then something occurred to him. “Thoros, could I speak to Jaime alone for a second?”</p>
<p>Thoros gave a mock groan of annoyance but left.</p>
<p>“Could you not resist one final opportunity to make my life difficult?” Jaime sighed. “Seriously, I just promoted you! Most people would be falling over themselves to thank me, but no—“</p>
<p>“You could switch offices too,” Beric said quietly.</p>
<p>Jaime stopped mid-rant.</p>
<p>“Come to the Riverlands, if you like. It’s not too late to get out of this,” Beric offered shyly.</p>
<p>“The ‘this’ you speak of is my family,” Jaime said drily. </p>
<p>“I don’t care, you can pretend all you like, but I know you’re not like them. You don’t have to stick with them, you don’t...” Beric trailed off when he saw Jaime shaking his head sadly. </p>
<p>“They can still be saved. Not my father, maybe not my sister, but I can’t just leave them.”</p>
<p>There was a long silence.</p>
<p>“I‘ve actually missed your stupid smile at the office,” Jaime said presently. “Pia sends her love by the way. I’ve hired her as a secretary. Father’s given me significant leeway to sort out the disaster he and Clegane created. I even got to fire Trant.”</p>
<p>“I’m glad,” Beric replied honestly.</p>
<p>“No irritating optimism, no do-gooder pluckiness. I suppose that’s why I did it.”</p>
<p>“Did what?” Beric asked.</p>
<p>“Hired your replacement from the Stormlands. Hell, every office needs one idealist.”</p>
<p>Beric smiled.</p>
<p>“Who’d you pick? Maybe I knew them.”</p>
<p>“A woman from Storms End. Brienne Tarth.”</p>
<p>“What’d you talk about?” Thoros yawned later, when Jaime had left and they were snuggled in the hospital bed together.</p>
<p>“My replacement,” Beric answered.</p>
<p>“You’re irreplaceable,” Thoros said immediately. Beric gave him a wry look.</p>
<p>“I’m serious. Where on earth would I find another charmingly idealistic not to mention dashingly handsome one-eyed knight prosecutor in shining armor?”</p>
<p>“Some knight in shining armor,” Beric huffed into the crook of Thoros’ neck. “I believe YOU had to rescue ME.”</p>
<p>“Well as someone very wise once told me, even white knights need to be rescued occasionally.”</p>
<p>“...hmph. They do sound smart.”</p>
<p>“Very.”</p>
<p>“You should probably listen to them more.”</p>
<p>“Indubitably.”</p>
<p>“Especially when they tell you you’ve had too much drink.”</p>
<p>“Well let’s not get carried away,” Thoros kissed him and Beric laughed, and even though he’d been battered and bruised by this world, he knew he wouldn’t trade it for any other.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As a side note, being a lawyer in the United States requires four years of undergraduate education (any degree) followed by three years of a graduate degree (law). Being a lawyer in most other parts of the world requires getting an undergraduate law degree. So Beric became a lawyer at 25 (modeling the US system) and is now 29, but other people who might have studied elsewhere could have become a lawyer as early as 22. </p>
<p>Also Jaime Lannister hasn't met Brienne yet, so he's naturally still in angsty sarcastic mode :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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